I HAVE been asked several times ‘why am I so sceptical of the anthropogenic global warming (AGW) hypothesis’? There are many reasons, some of which I have documented in previous articles at this weblog, but these have relied on sometimes complex calculations which I admit can be difficult to appreciate. So I would like to outline here a few of my reasons based only on simple consistency with the AGW proponents’ own data.
1. The AGW movement claims there has been a global temperature rise of 0.5C over the last 60 years and that this is due to increasing CO2. Both AGW proponents and sceptics accept that the relationship between energy retained and CO2 concentration is logarithmic (a constant increase in retained energy for each doubling of CO2). The AGW movement data also shows that since 1900 CO2 has risen by very close to half a doubling over this 60 year period.
IPCC have claimed in their 4th assessment report (summary for policy makers), that the most likely temperature rise by 2070, when CO2 will have risen by a further half doubling to twice the level in 1900, is a further 3C rise (page 12). Why would the first half doubling give 0.5C rise while the second half doubling gives 3C or 6 times as much rise?
2. One claim I have heard is that it takes the climate a long time to respond to the change in CO2 concentration and we have not yet seen the entire rise from the first half doubling. The same IPCC 4th assessment report (page 12, 13 and 14) indicates that if CO2 were stabilised at the current level, the temperature would rise by a further 0.2C over 2 decades stabilising at 0.7C above the 1900 level.
If the current temperature rise is not yet at the equilibrium level then for the business as usual scenario the temperature rise by 2070 will also not be at the equilibrium level. Yet the IPCC data suggests the equilibrium rise from the first half doubling is not even one quarter of the less than equilibrium rise from the second half doubling. To me this is illogical.
3. IPCC claim an increase in retained energy of around 3.7 watts/sqM for each doubling of CO2 (1.66 watts/sqM for the current rise page 4). They admit this is much too small to result in a 3+ degree temperature rise. The large temperature rise is based on claims of very large net positive feedback in the climate system.
Yet, every natural stable system I can think of exhibits net negative feedback. Indeed the terms stability and negative feedback are synonymous since negative feedback is what causes stability. By contrast, positive feedback causes instability (such as tipping points where a large change in output occurs for a small change in input). Stability does not mean zero change, it means the response to changes in input are small enough and sufficiently controlled so as to not cause system destruction or runaway. If you want to argue that the climate system is not stable then I would why it has remained conducive to continued life on this planet for billions of years. This is despite all the change in CO2 levels, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar output and orbital changes over the millennia. To me, that is a very good definition of climate stability.
4. The AGW modellers claim cloud feedback is positive. AGW advocates seem to divide clouds into two categories, low clouds and high clouds. Every report I have read acknowledges that low clouds cause cooling. With regard to high clouds there is some dispute but the AGW modellers claim they cause warming. Further they claim a warming planet results in a bias away from low clouds and towards high clouds thus exacerbating warming, hence contributing to positive feedback.
At the same time they claim constant relative humidity in their models. This means that as the temperature rises, more water must be evaporating. Now unless we want to predict that the amount of water in the atmosphere is going to continuously rise until the oceans are suspended over our heads, more evaporation must imply more precipitation ie: more rain. However, rain only comes from low clouds not high clouds, so more rain means more low cloud mass not less low cloud mass. This contradicts the previous position. If the claim is that both increase, then that means significantly more cloud mass in total. Clouds are the biggest contributor to Earth’s albedo (the fraction of incoming solar energy reflected back out to space). Rising total cloudiness means increasing albedo and the albedo is very strongly cooling. The albedo already causes 100 watts/sqM to be reflected away from Earth. To cancel out the entire impact claimed by IPCC for doubling CO2 only requires an increase in cloudiness from 60% to 62.4%.
An increase in temperature, leading to more evaporation, in turn leading to more cloudiness which reduces the solar input to Earth thus reducing temperatures is a description of negative feedback not positive feedback.
5. The claimed “proof” of positive feedback is a model prediction of a hot spot in the tropics at mid troposphere levels. However all the experimental evidence from many, many measurements has failed to find any evidence of such a hot spot. In science, a clear prediction that is falsified experimentally means the underlying hypothesis on which the prediction is based is wrong.
6. The reports documenting man’s CO2 emission use some scarily large numbers but these have to be viewed in the light of the overall system size. For example, a million dollars is an extremely large amount of money for a private individual but it is almost petty cash for a government. If we want to put the numbers into perspective we need to relate them to the size of the system. Why not express CO2 quantities in terms of how many PPM 1 year’s emissions will raise or lower the atmospheric CO2 level (if all of it stayed in the atmosphere). We could call that PPM equivalents.
In those terms, human emissions amount to about 2.7 PPM equivalents. Now NASA have published a diagram showing annual CO2 transfers for the planet. This shows terrestrial plants absorbing about 61 PPM equivalents. We know that both rising CO2 and rising temperature favour faster plant growth. That’s why horticulturalists artificially raise CO2 levels in glass houses to about 1000 PPM. It is also why plants grow faster in the tropics than in cooler locations on earth. More to the point, a recent study showed average plant growth has accelerated by about 6% over the last 30 years. A 6% increase in plant growth means a 6% increase in absorbed CO2, from 61PPM equivalents to 64.7 PPM equivalents. This means that human emissions have increased by 2.7 PPM equivalents but plants have increased their absorption by an extra 3.7 PPM equivalents over the same period. The increased plant growth is consuming more than 100% of human emissions. Is there another (natural) factor contributing to CO2 increases?
This response, more CO2 leading to faster plant growth which in turn consumes more CO2 is another example of the widespread bias towards negative feedback I alluded to earlier. Apart from which, is increased plant growth and thus agricultural productivity bad? I would have thought it was highly desirable.
7. The AGW hypothesis is based on temperature rises between about 1975 and 1998 or about 25 years worth of data. This is claimed to be definitive yet the last 10 years worth of data shows falling global temperatures. This is claimed to be a short term aberration and of no consequence. I do not see how 25 years can be considered definitive beyond dispute while 10 years of data is a short term aberration, too short to be significant. I would have thought at least a 10:1 ratio would be necessary to make such a claim.
8. If I adopt this 10:1 ratio by looking at the last 100 years worth of data I find 1910-1940 temperatures rising while CO2 was not. 1940 to 1975 temperatures falling while CO2 rising, 1975 to 1998 temperatures rising while CO2 rising and 1998 to 2009 temperatures falling while CO2 rising. Three quarters of the period shows no correlation or negative correlation with CO2 and only one quarter shows positive correlation. I do not understand how one can claim a hypothesis proven when ¾ of the data set disagrees with it. To me it is the clearest proof that the hypothesis is wrong.
9. For the last 10 years the global temperature data shows either no atmospheric temperature rise or indeed a falling global temperature. Recently this has been claimed to be due to a combination of a quiet sun and changes in ocean circulation superimposed on the underlying warming trend. The further claim is that when these effects reverse, warming will start again with a vengeance.
If these natural processes can cancel out the impact of AGW then they are as powerful as AGW. If they can overwhelm the impact of AGW to cause cooling they are more powerful, yet IPCC and other AGW proponents have claimed in previous assessment reports that solar influences are only a minor contributor compared to CO2.
The sun was unusually active during the latter half of the 20th century in contrast to its current inactivity and the ocean circulation was the opposite of what is now happening. Thus the natural effects claimed to be causing cooling now would have been causing warming in the late 20th century. If these natural effects are as large as the AGW impact then they would have caused half the observed 20th century warming. If the natural effects now outweigh the AGW impact to cause cooling then they would have been responsible for more than half the observed 20th century warming.
This is not only in contradiction of the earlier IPCC claims, it also means that the actual impact of CO2 increases since 1900 is much less than the claimed 0.5C. At most 0.25C and possibly much less even than that.
If in fact the temperature returns to the long term average over the next few years (as seems to be increasingly likely), it suggests that these natural processes were responsible for essentially all the observed temperature changes over the 20th century with negligible impact from CO2 changes.
10. I have looked at the raw temperature record for the USA (USHCN data) and the Bureau of Meteorology data for Victoria, Australia. Both show fluctuations of temperature with time but zero underlying trend for the last century. By contrast, the official IPCC endorsed data shows a strong underlying upwards trend. When I investigate why the difference, I find that the raw data has been adjusted for several supposed factors and every one of these adjustments created a warming trend. This implies that the claimed warming trend is due to the adjustments, not the raw data. In any less controversial scientific issue, such a result would be viewed with the greatest possible scepticism and would be extremely unlikely to be accepted.
When I examine the raw temperature data record for cities compared with nearby suburban or rural areas, I find an extremely high signature of urban heat island effect. Yet the people doing the temperature adjustments claim that urban heat island effects are negligible and do not require correction. This is despite the fact that a significant proportion of the measurement stations are in cities.
Such a clear factor not corrected for while other more subtle claimed factors are corrected casts further doubt on the correction protocol. If there is an upwards bias in the corrections, it means the claimed warming trend is exaggerated and may in fact not exist at all.
11. The mainstream media keep reporting that the current situation is increasingly dire and is much worse than even the previous pessimistic projections. When I examine this statement I find that previous projections predicted rapid atmospheric warming during the last 10 years whereas in fact we have had cooling. They predicted rapid increase in rate of rise of sea level when in fact the rate of sea level rise has recently declined. They predicted a very rapid increase in Arctic summer sea ice loss whereas in fact, for the last 2 years, it has been increasing. They predicted a rapid rise in hurricane incidence and severity when in fact there has been a decline. To me the media’s many claims are not supportable. I also consider it to be beyond simple error. At best it is unpardonable gross carelessness in checking the data they are reporting and at worst it is deliberate bias in reporting.
12. More recently, in response to the data showing no warming for the last 10 years, I have seen new claims that global land temperatures are now deemed irrelevant. The newly discovered measure of importance is the rise in ocean temperature, since it is now claimed that this is by far the largest planetary heat sink. If that claim is true, it makes all the previous data claiming to show strong global warming over the period 1975 to 1998 also irrelevant. To suggest that from 1975 to 1998, the energy went into warming the land and air and then abruptly in 1998 it stopped doing that and the heat instead went into heating the oceans is, to me, completely absurd. Nature simply does not work that way. It is like claiming you put the kettle on, for the first minute the energy goes into heating the water and then abruptly it stops heating the water and starts heating the room instead.
13. Looking further at the claim of warming ocean temperatures. Late last century it was realised that the method of measuring ocean temperatures was extremely inaccurate and unreliable. To overcome that, a sophisticated, global system of buoys was designed and implemented at very considerable cost and effort. These buoys repeatedly dive down to measure temperatures and then resurface to report back findings This network is called the Argo network and it became operational in 2003. Since becoming operational, it has shown ocean cooling. Yet the scientists who claim ongoing ocean warming exclude the Argo data and the satellite data instead relying entirely on the earlier poor reliability methods.
The same scientific community which claimed a method was inaccurate and unreliable, designed and implemented a new high accuracy measurement system, are now rejecting the new high accuracy data in favour of the older data they themselves viewed as unreliable. How can that be justified? Why is the data from the older less reliable method correct, while results from the new, high accuracy methodology are wrong? What does that say about the scientists who designed the Argo system but apparently don’t trust its output? To me it suggests selecting data to prove a favoured hypothesis, commonly called cherry picking.
Some sites are talking about “correcting” the Argo data. Why should a carefully thought out, brand new, high accuracy system already require adjustment to its outputs? Was a mistake made in the design? Why are the proposed adjustments again in the direction of exacerbating the claimed warming? When the raw data contradicts the hypothesis yet the “adjustments and corrections” all reverse that result so as to support the championed hypothesis, it’s time to start worrying.
14. What mankind is doing by consuming fossil fuels is recycling CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere but got trapped in the distant past. Is there a “correct” level of CO2? What I have read suggests that the Earth was a more verdant place before the CO2 got locked up in fossil fuels. Would the Earth be more or less pleasant a place if the carbon currently locked up in fossil fuels were again available to the biosphere. Not just for humans but for all living things, plants and animals. Surely we should consider that before we pick some arbitrary recent point in time and declare that the CO2 level at that time is the ideal to be maintained at all costs.
FROM a slightly different but related perspective, I see the AGW story continuously changing. When one measure no longer trends the wanted way, a change is made to a new measure (change from surface to ocean temperatures and ocean acidity). In one report, an effect is claimed to be negligible when that suits the hypothesis yet the same measure is later used as a reason to explain away embarrassing trends (Solar influence and ocean currents). All the observed effects are very moderate (less than 0.5C) if present at all yet hysteria is generated on the basis of hypothesised extreme future outcomes (up to 6C rise and 10 meter sea level rises). Outcomes far enough in the future so as to be un-testable yet close enough to impact people being born today. Claims based on abstract models that fail even short term validation tests. As a practicing scientist, I have seen this scenario more than once before, changing benchmarks and indicative parameters, rewriting predictions and predicted causes after the event, excusing erroneous predictions. These are clear signs of propping up a false hypothesis.
There does seem to be clear evidence that temperature changed several times over the 20th century both up and down. There is far less evidence for any underlying upwards trend due to CO2 and many reasons to question the data analysis that tries to demonstrate such a trend.
One of the arguments I often hear is “well even if AGW is not absolutely proven we should take action just in case its correct” – the precautionary principle. I see two reasons to disagree with that.
Firstly, if rising CO2 should bring about some warming it is by no means certain that this would be catastrophically bad or for that matter whether it would be bad at all. It seems quite likely to me that the cure would be worse than the disease.
Secondly, and to me much more importantly, there is another issue we need to consider and that is the law of unintended consequences. Briefly this states that whenever you take action there will always be consequences you did not consider in advance and did not intend. Since there are many more ways to be wrong than to be right there is a better than 50:50 chance that these consequences will be bad. If the original action is based on a false premise it greatly increases the risk of bad unintended consequences. The precautionary principle is based on the belief that there is no down side to taking action. The law of unintended consequences tells us that there is always a down side and the cost versus benefit always needs to be carefully evaluated before acting.
We are already seeing some very bad unintended consequences of the action taken so far over global warming. The government driven initiative to use less fossil fuel by diluting it with ethanol is causing massive forest clearing the Amazon basin (to grow the ethanol feedstock) and is very significantly raising food prices causing even worse starvation in 3rd world countries. Terrible as it is, this has not greatly impacted on western society but the next phase most certainly will.
There is another very serious unintended consequence that I would like to raise here; one that concerns me very deeply. When I listen to the public AGW debate I hear very high profile politicians and prominent public figures calling for people who openly disagree with AGW to be put on trial for treason. I hear many cases of people losing their jobs because of voicing sceptical opinions. I hear prominent global warming advocates refusing to enter into debates or trying to avoid debates by claiming the science is settled, and by claiming we do not have time, we have only weeks to act. I hear AGW advocates resorting to personal attacks against people who disagree rather than addressing the technical issues they raise.
I hear AGW proponents claiming to be the under funded underdogs, fighting to protect the planet against greedy capitalists, yet the reality is their funding is at least 1000 times greater than the sceptics funding. I see many reports of scientists refusing to release their workings, thus preventing review of their methodology, despite the fact that their work was funded by public money.
I see how the established media abandons balance in reporting by strongly favouring proponents of AGW, ignoring or denigrating sceptics and forcing most onto blog sites like this one. I hear some environmental groups and activists publicly claim that its OK and even necessary to exaggerate the threat so as to get the public to engage. I see the courts condoning acts of vandalism and even violence against essential public infrastructure. I see high profile public figures supporting such acts and claiming them to be reasonable and justified.
In short I see our society abandoning some of our most vital democratic freedoms over this hysteria: Free speech, impartial enforcement of the law, balance in reporting, freedom of information. These are freedoms our forebears gave their lives to bequeath to us, they are our most valuable inheritance and we seem to be throwing them away over an unproven hysterical hypothesis.
More recently I have read articles from England advocating individual ration cards for petrol, heating oil, gas, electricity. Is water and food next? War time austerity as an ongoing future way of life? A return to the agrarian poverty of the middle ages? I note the new film “Not evil just wrong” has had to be distributed via the internet rather than traditional media. One step from distribution through an underground network? Will that apply to all future sceptical writing? What about other writing contrary to the popular opinion of the day?
These are the issues that differentiate between a free democracy and a totalitarian regime and the further one goes down this path the harder it is to pull back. History has shown us that the disease is far easier to acquire than to get rid of.
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Notes and Links
Michael Hammer graduated with a Bachelor of Engineering Science and Master of Engineering Science from Melbourne University. Since 1976 he has been working in the field of spectroscopy with the last 25 years devoted to full time research for a large multinational spectroscopy company.
To read more from Mr Hammer click here and scroll down: http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/author/michael-hammer/
Jennifer Marohasy BSc PhD is a critical thinker with expertise in the scientific method.
Hi Michael,
Thanks for the review and logical expression of your concerns about AGW. The primary reason I read this site is for such thoughtful articles. I suppose the Comments will be dotted with the usual sneering, screeching diatribes, but that is how the self-ordained protectors of AGW invariably respond.
The thing that really creeps me out about the AGW movement is how much it seems to be self-assembling. I’ve always assumed that totalitarian regimes needed an evil leader to come to power – a Hitler, Stalin, or other ruthless and deranged but competent primary manipulator. Now I really wonder if a ‘great man’ is necessary to generate a belief system based on hatred (‘[other] people are evil and must be punished’ seems to be the First Commandment of AGW). A few false prophets and a corrupt media seems to be all we need to end up prisoners of a new –ism.
Hear!! Hear!! Michael, Standby for the nit-picking and parsing of your post by the AGW faithful! Ignore them, I do.
Dear Mr. Hunter,
thank you for your opinion and your arguments.
What I additionally miss are engineering standards like “six sigma” or such applied to the data and the evidence that is claimed to be supportive to the CO2-Hypothesis.
Best regards
Guenter Hess
Hammer says
5. The claimed “proof” of positive feedback is a model prediction of a hot spot in the tropics at mid troposphere levels. However all the experimental evidence from many, many measurements has failed to find any evidence of such a hot spot. In science, a clear prediction that is falsified experimentally means the underlying hypothesis on which the prediction is based is wrong.
No. That indicates how poor your understanding of the case for AGW is. The ‘hot spot’ controversy has nothing to do with proof of positive feedbacks. That is what the case against has created as a strawman, and then attacked.
I’m over being sceptical, that’s so lame. Become an outright ‘denier’ and you will see we are heading into global cooling.
The political and social impact of a two degree drop in temperature, in the northern hemisphere within a decade or so, has me in ‘alarmist’ mode.
Mike, I found your piece very interesting. One thing I’m not quite clear on. In your point 1, first paragraph, you refer to a 60 year period up to the present in one place, but in another place the 60 years period starts from 1900. That would take us up to 1960 not up to the present. Is there a misprint here or have I just missed something?
Hello Dave and thanks for your comments. With regard to your comment that totalitarian regimes need an evil leader, alas I think the opposite is the truth. I think the regime is created by the circumstances not by the leader. There are always potential leaders just waiting to capitalise. That’s why killing the leader rarely works, someone else just steps up. In this case, I think a number of people however innocently are creating the situation. They probably do not realise the possible outcome and no doubt they will suffer as much as the rest of us but that is small consolation.
SJT
All the climate models demonstrate that a tropical mid to uppper tropospheric hot spot should be present if the climate system is warming.
There does seem to be some agreement that warming due to solar effects should create a hotspot that is similar to warming due to greenhouse gases. The problem is that the hotspot that has actually been identified is quite unremarkable and does not apppear to be at all alarming.
So there is no longer a real strawman argument here, even though it may have taken a few months for people on both sides of the divide to get onto the same page re this matter.
David Elder; My perception is that the AGW advocates are somewhat imprecise over the exact start times for the hyptothesis. They relate CO2 levels back to the 1900 figure of 280 PPM. Sometimes they talk about temperature rise since 1900 and sometimes since 1970. The implication seems to be that they beleive temperature was stable in the first half of the 20th century and only started to rise in the second half.
The poitn you raise probably reflects some of this. I intended to refer to events up to the present so when I referred to 1900 I meant the last 110 years although I admit I did not stae that. My apologies for the imprecision, my thinking tends to be point by point and I obviously was influnced by the way the AGW proponents presented the information.
Michael Hammer
You are spot on with your concluding remarks and your post above – this process has been ongoing for over 80 years and AGW was the last stage. While I don’t think there is anything sinister with it, the problem stems from being a pseudoscience – the initial assumption was and remains unverified, but maintained by consensus. The AGW edifice is then cantilevered off this initial starting assumption. It’s the Platonic mind set at work and this is the real problem. AGW is a product of that system, and it will have to go through its motions before the mob understand it.
That said, Perth has had its wettest september ever, but Tim Flannery said we would end up a waterless ghost city. It’s moments like these that makes you wonder if the likes of Flannery et al actually modify their ideas in the face of contradiction, or do they become even more rigid in outlook and start looking for other factors to confirm their belief.
You have it in a nutshell! I don’t think I have seen such a concise demolition of the AGW Scam.
However, I feel that for the benefit of idiots and politicians, an even more condensed treatise may be required and I propose a four point argument, as fourteen may be too taxing for some:
1. Even if CO2 were an important contributor to global warming, the amount produced by humans (including breathing), is insignificant compared with other natural causes beyond our control.
2. The Earth has the benefit of a very effective thermostat, as the great majority of its surface is water, which, on heating readily produces clouds. This NFB has proved itself over billions of years to be the dominant mechanism which has kept the planet’s temperature stable enough to sustain life.
3. We depend on the sun to provide us with practically all our heat, which our “thermostat” regulates. If the sun should go out we freeze – and when it eventually explodes into a red giant we fry, but in the meantime we cope with its variability.
4. It’s all about politics, power and control freakery.
Well done Michael, an insightful and comprehensive expose of the terrible thing that AGW is; point 11 is particularly vital; the general public realise they are being sold a dog but lack the guidance from the msm [with a few exceptions] to put the details together. Basically the media have been exposed as either fellow travellers on the ideological donkey of AGW or vanity driven bien pensants.
One thing you did exclude was the comparison between AGW and the Eden myth; there are many articles on the religiosity of AGW but its resemblence to the Eden parable is striking; consider, a long, serene, natural paradise where humanity lived in harmony with nature, then suddenly the wrenching effect of modern technology, symbolically the eating of the apple, during the 20thC; humanity through the application of technology and utilisation of energy which is cheap and abundant, moves away from natural constraints; for this temerity we are threatened with the wrath of nature: burning, hurricanes, pestilence, cats sleeping with dogs, eternity listening to and reading the drivel from AGW spokespersons; all of this is the equivalent of Adam and Eve’s banishment from Eden and being thrust out into the inferior, harsh and dangerous world of man, removed form the natural paradise of what existed before the use of fossil fuels. The scripture is centred around Mann’s holy icon, the hockey stick and spoken to us by high priests like gore and hansen and flannels. Like all good religions there is dollops of guilt, paranoia and mechanisms by which the sinful can see the light, pay the price and be absolved to continue to live their puny lives according to the creed of nature. It is both obvious and pathetic.
All the climate models demonstrate that a tropical mid to uppper tropospheric hot spot should be present if the climate system is warming.
The ‘upper tropospheric hot spot’ debate has been created by deniers. The IPCC diagrams are describing the signature of AGW heating as distinct to, say, solar warming. If you look at the diagrams there is a hot upper tropical troposphere, which there is, and a cooling stratosphere, which there is. If the warming of the climate was due to solar forcing, there would be no cooling of the stratosphere. The upper tropical troposphere is very difficult to measure. Radiosondes aren’t very accurate, there are no long term records for it, it’s very high up, the satellites have problems measuring the temperature because it is right next to the stratosphere which is cooling and we don’t have a long term history from them.
Great work Michael Hammer, thank you for the summation. Not only are we making inroads against a collective mind set that has more to do with the centralisation of power and control and offering nothing but lip-service to our global environmental woes but your piece strikes a blow against pseudoscience and her fellow travellers. As regards Louis Hissink’s reference to the Platonic mind set I am remindered of a G K Chesterton quote: when people stop believing in God, they don’t believe in nothing – they believe in anything!
Mike Hammer says –
Secondly, and to me much more importantly, there is another issue we need to consider and that is the law of unintended consequences. Briefly this states that whenever you take action there will always be consequences you did not consider in advance and did not intend. Since there are many more ways to be wrong than to be right there is a better than 50:50 chance that these consequences will be bad. If the original action is based on a false premise it greatly increases the risk of bad unintended consequences. The precautionary principle is based on the belief that there is no down side to taking action. The law of unintended consequences tells us that there is always a down side and the cost versus benefit always needs to be carefully evaluated before acting.
We are already playing the game of unintended consequences. That is what this whole AGW issue is, no one intended it to happen.
Yet, every natural stable system I can think of exhibits net negative feedback. Indeed the terms stability and negative feedback are synonymous since negative feedback is what causes stability. By contrast, positive feedback causes instability (such as tipping points where a large change in output occurs for a small change in input). Stability does not mean zero change, it means the response to changes in input are small enough and sufficiently controlled so as to not cause system destruction or runaway. If you want to argue that the climate system is not stable then I would why it has remained conducive to continued life on this planet for billions of years. This is despite all the change in CO2 levels, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar output and orbital changes over the millennia. To me, that is a very good definition of climate stability.
You are conflating life with species. They are two distinct things in terms of survivability in changing climate conditions.
The Age newspaper published this statement:
“There is not, now, much value in arguing about the science of climate change. Even if it’s wrong, enough people now believe it that it may as well be right.”
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/20/quote-of-the-week-19/#more-11010
Game set and match, I am afraid.
Louis, Science goes postmodern:
Climate change is real for ME, OK?
Thank you Michael, well put!
It is interesting that with even such sound summing up as this the AGW believers will still call the sceptics deniers and will revile them for their lack of logic. That right, SJT?
But you have to admire the neatness and poetry of this hypothesis-cum-tidal-wave. The believers have their guilt, the deniers get whipped and pay the price and the great unwashed keep their place.
Green religious utopia!
SJT,
I recently read that the 2 satellites sampling the troposphere were considered very accurate, so accurate that 2 competing organisations only differed by thousandths of a degree C.
cohenite,
The ‘underfunded’ Rev Tim is in New York right now preaching his new religion.
Michael,
Beautifully written . But how do we get it read in the daily paper ?
Jimmock
Hah, postmodern science it is – I received an email which lamented its effect in our area of business – mining
“Worse in the short term, in a minor field, it has been missing from understanding of the “TRUTH !? ” of many calculated ore reserves which has directly caused significant financial angst.”
Hence my continued opposition to the misuse of intensive variables in calculating averages etc.
When you do that in an ore reserve the numbers don’t stack up – and we know because when we have mined it and done the reconciliation between what was estimated in the ground and what was actually mined, we can show that simple avergaing of intensive variables is the source of the error, apart from gross errors in geological modeling.
To me the media’s many claims are not supportable. I also consider it to be beyond simple error. At best it is unpardonable gross carelessness in checking the data they are reporting and at worst it is deliberate bias in reporting.
In 2006, when Al Gore really got this thing cranking up, I remember thinking it was the latest in a line of Democrat attempts to tie President Bush’s other hand behind his back.
They’d already trotted out the Abu Ghraib thing and the Valerie Plame thing. They’d as much as declared Gitmo a torture chamber guarded by Nazis, for the so called crime of “disrespecting” a Koran during a jail cell roust.
Add on global warming, the lastest humbug flavor of the week. I didn’t think much of it, then I discovered a new red spot on Jupiter. Shucks.
I thought, “Another Democrat crap story blown to hell.”
But it wasn’t blown to hell. The papers kept banging on with the fairy tale as if the whole thing were impervious to contrary evidence, like astronomical facts you can see through a backyard telescope.
In fact I noticed after searching the internet for the news of Great Red Spot 2, that
1) it happened in the year 2000,
2) the newspapers hadn’t seen fit to report it.
We all lived through the Voyager visits to Jupiter and the Hubble pictures of the Shoemaker-Levy comet crash. We were kept apprised of the discovery of lightning, informed of newly discovered rings and moons. We were treated to full color spreads of vulcanos erupting on Io and the resulting torus of electricly charged debris surrounding Jupiter.
These weren’t just small stories tucked away back on page B6. They weren’t buried on the AP wire. They were given banner front page space, the full Monty, for everyone to see.
That was back when NASA was a mighty workhorse of discovery, instead of a worn down nag, forced to haul Doctor Hansen’s wagon of elixers and potions for planetary wellness.
So why is it that when Jupiter grows the second largest planetary storm system in the solar system, with Galileo in attendance and Cassini in route, we were given nothing, nada, zipped lips, and quelch when Red Spot Jr blew up on the face of Jove?
There’s only one reason. Because it’s very existence and timing was inconvenient for AL GORE and the DEMS lastest scheme.
This is when I introduced myself to Lubos. Found him on a search engine under “Global warming on Jupiter“.
Believe it or not his was the top return. I think there was another relevant hit from space.com, besides those two the rest was fluff.
So if the question is “Are we dealing with deliberate bias in the reporting?” my answer is most definite.
Hell yes.
It’s no mistake. It’s not carelessness. It’s sleasy manipulative and deliberate.
What a good summary of the issues/flaws in the agw position.
I am surprised he stopped at 14, but then the poor dears probably couldnt handle any more.
Also, and unfortunately, I think it is too late, there is too much momentum already built up from a whole group of vested interests both here and overseas.
Too many careers, reputations and incomes at stake.
A huge beuacracy in Canberra, and in each of the labour states is already feeding off it, as well as universities with their specialist units, plus the BOM and CSIRO.
Just goes to show what happens when grand delusions meets self interest and buckets of other peoples money–despite the story underpinning it all being shot full of holes, as Michael Hammer and others continue to show.
I think I will go and buy share in Al Gores companies –thats if there are any left.
Beautifully put Michael, should be required reading for all pollies.
I must disagree with you on one point, & that is that energy is cheep. It’s not, ask any rural chinese. It’s very expensive, but for us, having had it for so long, has made us rich. I hope it will do the same for all of asia.
I can remember my grandfather, a boy at the turn of the last century, in rural England, telling stories of sneaking down to the railway line, at night, to pinch the coal that had fallen off the trains. His family could not afford to buy such good fuel, & yes, I mean pinch. The coal was still railway property, & they could be arrested if caught taking it.
When ever someone says that the “trickle down effect” doesn’t work, I think of him, pinching a few lumps of coal, & me driving a classsic sports car, given to me, by our use of energy.
When it comes to the media, I think the problem is with their modern method of training. No longer the knock about copy boy, living in the real world, while making it to bring a reporter, but years of uni & a HEX debt, before the job.
Hardly members of the intelligentsia, by quoting the academics in their articles they get some level of the acceptance they crave, in those circles. With many universities so heavily dependent on AGW funding, any hint of anti AGW in an article will get that door shut, very quickly.
This was really highlighted this morning on the “local” ABC, the girls club.
After half an hour of news, & the AM program, I couldn’t stand it, & had to turn it off. Every single item was another “climate change” beat up, accompanied by a professorial statment of extreme urgency. All this presented by a bunch of girls, who I’m sure, would have trouble making change for a bus ticket.
SJT,
I recently read that the 2 satellites sampling the troposphere were considered very accurate, so accurate that 2 competing organisations only differed by thousandths of a degree C.
I was referring to the upper tropical troposphere.
.14. What mankind is doing by consuming fossil fuels is recycling CO2 that used to be in the atmosphere but got trapped in the distant past. Is there a “correct” level of CO2? What I have read suggests that the Earth was a more verdant place before the CO2 got locked up in fossil fuels. Would the Earth be more or less pleasant a place if the carbon currently locked up in fossil fuels were again available to the biosphere. Not just for humans but for all living things, plants and animals. Surely we should consider that before we pick some arbitrary recent point in time and declare that the CO2 level at that time is the ideal to be maintained at all costs.
No one has said there is a “correct” level of CO2. The issue is rapid (in geological terms) change to climate. A lot of species won’t adapt, and will die off. The scope is, as the name implies, global. Every species will find it’s climate is changing, and will be affected. This will happen in a rapid time. Many species will die out. Obviously, if the earth becomes once again a ‘verdant’ one, a lot of species adapted for their specialised local climates will not be able to adapt. Those species that are able to adapt quickly, and take advantage of rapid change will dominate. For example, weeds and other pests. There will be a huge loss of biodiversity, one of the things that makes this planet such an interesting place to live in.
Thank You Michael.
SJT: “No one has said there is a “correct” level of CO2…. There will be a huge loss of biodiversity, one of the things that makes this planet such an interesting place to live in.”
and the evidence for this is?
?
SJT give it away, you know you have lost.
all you have left is ideology and hysteria, not science
I have a concern. When we do have a true crisis; who among us is going to believe it?
We’ve been mislead so many times by scientists claiming our lives are in immediate peril from this or that, and then the supposed “crisis” ends up being of no consequence. So many times in fact, that we are getting immunized to such proclamations.
Ultimately, the people will laugh at the greedy myopic scientists and the lazy misguided journalists. This will all come about quite naturally when the north American growing season is shortened and the Thames freezes over.
Not the end of the world, yet a chance to get things in perspective.
“I have a concern. When we do have a true crisis; who among us is going to believe it?”
Good point, SMS.
Can you imagine Luke or SJT if their respective arses were on fire?
But would they believe it with any more certainty than AGW?
and the evidence for this is?
Past mass extinctions.
SJT:
“Editor’s Note: We asked several scientists from various fields what they thought were the greatest mysteries today, and then we added a few that were on our minds, too. This article is one of 15 in LiveScience’s “Greatest Mysteries” series running each weekday.
They are known ominously as the Big Five—the five greatest mass extinctions over the past 500 million years, each of which is thought to have annihilated anywhere from 50 to 95 percent of all species on the planet.
Many unsolved mysteries remain regarding these disasters, perhaps the greatest of which is what caused each of them. But research is uncovering how these extinction events dictated the fate of life on this planet—for instance, determining which animals first crawled onto land and which ruled the oceans.
The main suspects behind these catastrophes seem to come either from above, in the form of deadly asteroids or comets, or from below, in the form of extraordinarily massive volcanism. Occasionally, however, unexpected culprits arise—for instance, otherwise innocuous forests. ”
http://www.livescience.com/strangenews/070808_GM_mass_extinctions.html
A very good article Michael, but I still think that the end of the LIA 100+ years ago must be the starting point for global warming and of course this one event can easily account for the 0.7c increase in temp.
Your point on clouds is also interesting because in the last 100+ years only Tasmania ( minus 12.3mm/ decade) Victoria (minus 1.87mm/ decade ) SE Aust ( minus 0.77mm/ decade) and SW WA ( minus 10.25mm/ decade ) have recieved less rainfall.
This is hardly surprising because Prof Patrick De Deckker found that Southern Aust has indeed been drying out for at least the last 5,000 years.
Australia has recieved + 6.52mm/ decade more rainfall in the last 100 years and even the State of SA has recorded an increase of +2.79 mm/ decade.
M Hammer: “If you want to argue that the climate system is not stable then I would why it has remained conducive to continued life on this planet for billions of years. This is despite all the change in CO2 levels, volcanic eruptions, changes in solar output and orbital changes over the millennia. To me, that is a very good definition of climate stability.”
The only problem I have with this otherwise excellent and well thought out article is the issue of climate stability. The climate has been definitely stable enough to support life for billions of years, but perhaps not life as we know it Jim. I am thinking of ice ages etc, so clearly there are instabilities in the system in that respect. Sea level rises of several meters are irrelevant to life in the long run, but serious to the property values of coastal dwellers.
Michael Hammer,
To an old Bushie from the back of Barellan, that was the best and most concise summary of the AGW debate I have read.
Thahks and well done.
I believe that here in Australia we should all endeavour to have this presented to our local Federal Members and especially to Turnbull and the Liberals, because only they can stop the proposed legislation here.
Cohenite:
That was a great response.
Would love to use it elsewhere with acknowledgments.
SJT, you’re violin, she an’t got no strings mate.
That bow I’m playin’ on hollow wood.
Pikey
Typo, sorry,
Should be: “That bow him playin’ on hollow wood.
Pikey.
Louis,
there is mounting evidence that the Yonger Dryas was caused by an asteroid exploding over north America, the effects of which were apparently not registered in the southern hemisphere.
Even Mike Hume in UK New Scientist is now speaking of the climate and our influence over it (and it us,) in spiritual terms rather than scientific terms.
I believe we are clearly winning.
See http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg20327241.000-climate-change-no-eden-no-apocalypse.html?page=2
El Gordo
Are you sure? It could have been an enomous dry ice bolide that caused the Younger Dryas – imagine the news headlines
“Dry ice explodes causing Younger Dryas”.
Congratulations Mike on a great demolition of AGW ‘theory’. From the gainsayers among the replies, it is clear that they have no real answers. You are spot on in your arguments that there must be powerful negative feed back mechanisms controlling temperature. Likewise there must be powerful negative feedback mechanisms acting on CO2 in the atmosphere if, as the AGW protagonists claim. it was stable before mankind started burning fossil fuels. Otherwise any small increase of CO2 from a slight warming of ocean, volcanoes, or burning of vegetation, would have led warming of the oceans and more CO2 released – a positive feedback system that would have led to runaway increase in CO2 and warming. But it is said that CO2 was remarkably constant at about 250 ppm for thousands of years. Clearly the increased absorption of CO2 by plants constitutes a creditable feedback mechanism on atmospheric CO2. That in fact explains why only half or less of the extra CO2 produced from fossil fuels has appeared in the atmosphere – as Co2 concentration increases the photosynthetic systems – terrestrial and aquatic will expand and CO2 will be absorbed faster – there seems to be no reason to suppose that this system is anywhere near saturated as we know that the earth carried far higher levels of vegetation in the past.
Ayrdale; interesting link; Hume says;
“Whereas a modernist reading of climate may once have regarded it as merely a physical condition for human action, we must now come to terms with climate change operating simultaneously as an overlying, but more fluid, imaginative condition of human existence.”
Pardon my vomit but I think this wanker means that AGW is the complete Foucaultian package; a catch-all justification for any form of social engineering that the Orwellian conductors of the modern social imagination [is there a bigger oxymoron than that?] deem necessary. AGW is the ultimate truth because it cannot be disproved; we have been heading towards this transcendental dictate ever since the great putrid thing was redescribed from global warming to climate change. The great tragedy of this however is that in this amorphous form AGW is not a creation of imagination but solipsism because there is no imagination in any anything which is not connected with reality; AGW is a virtual reality produced by the giant, artificial machines, the computers, which conclusions become edicts about reality; the scenario is not so far removed from the plug in, switch off reality of the Matrix and this tosser’s mental scramblings in academia have about the same empirical worth as the dreams of the cocooned victims in that movie; but of course all idiots like Hume think they are Neo.
Comment from: SMS September 21st, 2009 at 12:42 pm
“I have a concern. When we do have a true crisis; who among us is going to believe it?”
There is a new one afoot, I heard it on the wireless this morning, a paper was presented by a professor, that there are about 400 extinct volcanoes in Vic., and the one at Mt Gambier is overdue in erupting or something to that effect.
He was waxing lyrical about how Melbourne could be destroyed by the lava flow and ashes etc.
They received a recognition for the effort of researching and writing the paper, by the geological society of OZ.
Louis,
not to sure what it was, but it seems there are six north American sites which hold 12,900 year old Nanodiamond rich soil.
Marcus
Fear not – they have a lack of subduction zones to fire up the volcanoes – the closest one is NZ – but then I am starting to wonder how they intend explaining the energy source to melt the magma that spurts out of the volcano in the absence of subduction zones.
Oh, I know, if the ice masses in Antarctica and Greenland get thinner, that, apparently, can cause volcanic activity.
Could be compressed CO2 bombs under our feet?
SJT September 21st, 2009 at 11:50 am
SJT,
If the theory of AGW is right, then the increase of temperature at the middle to higher part of the troposphere in the tropics should be faster than on ground in the same tropics. That is also what all climate models calculate. But it isn’t found yet, there simply is no hot spot, even if there is some quibble about the statistical significance of the difference between the projection of the climate models and the observations.
That means that something is wrong with the models: either these overlooked some natural mechanism to spread the increase, or they overestimate the impact of CO2…
El Gordo,
I am familiar with that nanodiamond deposit – but those are not necessarily linked to some hypothetical bolide exploding in the atmosphere – rather it is more likely that the widespread eruption of kimberlites occurred and sprayed the region with nano diamonds.
At the same time neolithic people were carving petroglyphs into the rocks all over the world and documenting some enormous plasma instablility at the south pole – seems the solar wind increased an order of magnitude during that time causing a long period of EM instability in the atmosphere and ionosphere.
MH says
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/Clouds/
The study of clouds, where they occur, and their characteristics, play a key role in the understanding of climate change. Low, thick clouds primarily reflect solar radiation and cool the surface of the Earth. High, thin clouds primarily transmit incoming solar radiation; at the same time, they trap some of the outgoing infrared radiation emitted by the Earth and radiate it back downward, thereby warming the surface of the Earth. Whether a given cloud will heat or cool the surface depends on several factors, including the cloud’s altitude, its size, and the make-up of the particles that form the cloud. The balance between the cooling and warming actions of clouds is very close although, overall, averaging the effects of all the clouds around the globe, cooling predominates.
It doesn’t look like a big issue.
FE says
If the theory of AGW is right, then the increase of temperature at the middle to higher part of the troposphere in the tropics should be faster than on ground in the same tropics. That is also what all climate models calculate. But it isn’t found yet, there simply is no hot spot, even if there is some quibble about the statistical significance of the difference between the projection of the climate models and the observations.
Mike Hammers understanding is not correct. Regardless of the debate over the ‘hotspot’, it is not the proof of positive feedback. The hotspot and cooling troposphere are proof of an AGW ‘fingerprint’, as distinct to other forms of warming.
SJT’
You wrote “No one has said there is a “correct” level of CO2.”
Can you check my math please?
If you look at this page below
http://youthdecide.com.au/About-Us/Vote-information.aspx
You will see three scenarios whci are summerised as follows
1, 30% reduction in 1990 levels by 2020
2, 40% reduction in 1990 levels by 2020
3, 95% reduction in 1990 levels by 2050
A bit of back ground knowledge first
1750 (IPCC baseline year) CO2 levels were 275ppm
1990 levels were 350ppm
Current levels are 386ppm
To calculate 30% below 1990 levels we simply times 350 by 0.3 which gives us 105, now we take 105 away from 350 which gives us 245. The 245 figure is 30% below 1990 levels, is this right?
Therefore the above stated scenarios read like this
1, 245ppm by 2020
2, 210ppm by 2020
3, 17.5ppm by (95% below 1990 levels) 2050
Just so you are clear @200ppm plant growth stops, @150ppm plants die and we die with them, so either my math is horribly wrong or these % are incorrect which leads me to think that whilst there may not be a correct level there is a lower limit which seems beyond the grasp of some.
So please check my math, i hope i am wrong.
Dear Jennifer,
Some of my comments doesn’t come through to the blog, some others show up immediately…
Is there some rule for length or number of references or some “forbidden” words which makes that a message is seen as spam?
Herewith the full comment that I wanted to post on the article by Michael Hammer. Several shorter versions were sent, but none appears on the blog…
Sincerely,
Ferdinand Engelbeen
—————–
Ferdinand,
It seems I have a temperamental spam filter. Apologies. And thanks for bothering to send through the comment to me by email. For posting.
It has gone to spam for me as well … but I have retrieved it… see following.
Jennifer
——————————-
Dear Mr. Hammer,
While I can agree with most of your points, but there is one point where a lot of scientific evidence disagrees with you. That is about point
6: the CO2 absorption by plants.
According to the NASA estimates, see:
http://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/Features/CarbonCycle/Images/carbon_cycle_diagram.jpg
The amount of CO2 absorbed is about 120 GtC equivalents or indeed about 60 ppmv. So far so good. But most of it is short living (leaves,
stems) and returns back into the atmosphere within months to a few years, thanks to bacteria.
That is the main cause of the fluctuating CO2 levels over the seasons. The net result over a year currently is about 1.4 GtC (0.7 ppmv) of what the biosphere absorbs from the about 8 GtC
(4 ppmv) that humans emit by fossil fuel burning.
Some other part of the emissions (about 2 GtC or
1 ppmv) is absorbed by the oceans.
The NASA carbon cycle is based on a lot of publications, the main one for the partitioning between oceans and biosphere as CO2 sink is based on O2 and d13C trends, see Battle e.a. at:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/content/abstract/287/5462/2467
or more recently:
http://www.bowdoin.edu/~mbattle/papers_posters_and_talks/BenderGBC2005.pdf
While the partitioning has wide margins of error, the sum of all natural sinks and natural sources anyway is known with reasonable accuracy and is negative over the past 50+ years. That means that nature as a whole is a sink, not a source of CO2. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg
In average, some 55% of the emissions (as mass, not as original anthro molecules!) remains in the atmosphere, as long as the emissions increasingly go on…
——————————-
Ferdinand Engelbeen
Sorry SJT but that is not correct, the IPCC graphs are clearly labelled and according to the models the area about 10K above the the surface should warm due to AGW or more correctly due to the increase in water vapour. Said hotspot cannot be found so why is this so?
You can avoid the issue all you like but i am sure if the hotspot did exist you would be waving it around as proof positive that AGW is alive and well agreed? However it is not there which means the models are wrong which in turn means the theory is wrong.
So rather than ignore/manipulate the data why dont they revisit the theory to find out where they went wrong? I suggest it is because they are afraid of what they might find.
SJT;
I have to disagree with you. The debate over the hotspot in the middle to upper tropical troposphere has not been created by the sceptics. It is an output of the AGW models. The same models used as principle evidence of dangerous future warming. Testable predictions are the basis of checking on a theory. There are extremely few testable predictions from these models and those few there are should quite rightly be subjected to scrutiny. That is precisely what good science should be doing. With the greatist respect SJT,and I accept that this was probably not your intention but non the less, your comment comes across to me as more or less saying “the controversy over this issue is the sceptics fault because you should not have tested it, you should have simply taken it for granted we are right”. That is not science.
If the models make a prediction which is central to the basic theory and that prediction proves to be false than it is reasonable to assume that the theory is disproven. I cannot accept that it is reasonable to make a prediction, have that prediction falsified and then discount it as of little importance.
crakar14 September 21st, 2009 at 5:24 pm
The math is good, but the target is wrong: the proposed reduction (btw, impossible to reach without enormous efforts) is about the human emissions level (currently about 8 GtC/year), not about the absolute levels of CO2…
Dear Ferdinand; thanks for your comment. The NASA site you quote is the same site I used as the source for my data. This states that the human emissions are 5.5 GT rather than the 8 you quote which is how I got to the 2.7 PPM equivalent. With regard to the plant issue, the diagram states these are annual fluxes so if plant growth increases by 6% that means 3.6PPM equivalent increase in CO2 absorption. I guess your point is that along with that increase there will also be an increase in emission to the atmosphere from soils in particular as plant material decomposes wich counteracts some of the absorption.
If so, I accept your argument. An interesting point, you comment that over the last 50 years nature is a sink for CO2. That seems to imply that without human emissions the CO2 level would have been falling. But 50 years ago the level was about 315 PPM and others on this blog site have commented that at 200 PPM photosynthesis stops. I could infer from this that without man CO2 would now be falling to dangerous levels. Clearly that is absurd since it would have happened already centuries ago. The only other implication is that the fact that nature is a net sink of CO2 is a direct consequence of mans emissions (which I suspect is the case). This is of course a perfect example of negative feedback within the climate system – a reaction to a change in input which counteracts th impact of that change so as to promote stability.
An interesting question, if emissions were held constant at the current level, at what concentration would the increase in plant (and blue green algea in the sea) growth balance the emissions so as to form a new equilibrium? At this point, how much faster would plants be growing and would this be good or bad with respect to food production and greening of our planet.
SJT,
Take the point about levels of altitude , but that just revisits the whole thing about where we are going to measure this elusive warming .
With regard to rapid climate change, not in ‘geological’ terms, try 20 years at the end of the Holocene Climate Optimum. In this short period the Sahara dried up .Lakes , crocodiles and all, please be right about a little warming.
Unfortunately I think you are wrong and if honest research matched common knowledge you too would be worried about the post 1998 dryness in places like The Riverina and Sub Saharan Africa.
Believe me mate , I wish that you were right . For totally different, as yet ignored , reasons.
Such as food production and the sound of rain on my tin roof.
Michael Hammer September 21st, 2009 at 6:11 pm
Indeed, one can see that nature – even for CO2 – has some feedback mechanisms to keep the levels within workable limits…
If one looks at the cool period of earth’s history where we live in nowadays, over the past few million years temperature and CO2 levels were tightly connected, with a ratio over long periods (glacials – interglacials) of about 8 ppmv/K (and a lag of several hundreds of years for CO2). Levels varied between 180 ppmv during glacials to slightly over 300 ppmv for the warmest intervals.
180 ppmv seems too low for plant growth, but nature provides some help: near ground local CO2 levels from rotting vegetation are easely reaching over 1,000 ppmv. For low vegetation more than sufficient, but huge trees should have more problems to survive.
Optimal CO2 levels used in greenhouses are around 1,000 ppmv (in The Netherlands), higher levels don’t help further, but that may be a matter of available sunlight or other limiting factors. Thus there still is room for improvement for global plant growth!
From the process equilibrium viewpoint, we would see an equilibrium with the current emissions if the ocean and vegetation sink nearly doubles. Just an estimate, that would be roughly at a doubling of the difference between the current level and the pre-industrial level, or at about 480 ppmv, not even 2xCO2. Seems to me to have more benefits (slightly higher temperatures included) than drawbacks…
Louis, you might be able to help me with this.
http://www.solen.info/solar/cycl3.html
In the northern hemisphere winter of 1779-80 the US experienced one of the worst winters on record, while over in Edinburgh they had the coldest winter on record. The two winters between 1783 -1786 saw the Thames freeze solid and the winter of 1788-89 was severe enough to have a Frost Fair on the river.
If a high pressure establishes itself in Greenland and Scandanavia could we see a repeat of that?
El Gordo
I’m not sure we can expect an exact repetition – the fallacy lies in assuming we are dealing with a system that is predictable. Remember the earth’s geological evolution was anything but predictable, and remains so. So too with its climate and atmosphere chemistry. It seems to be continually changing to different physical states that are inherently unpredictable.
So I would venture if the present sunspot-less state continues, implying a general reduction in energy entering the solar system, and hence the earth, it might well be possible to have another LIA with a reduction in crop production and the ensuing famine, though these days were are better equipped, at least in the West as a result of capitalism, to deal with it. No so the rest of humanity.
I am assuming David Archibald’s analysis is correct and acting accordingly.
Wow!! I thought you guys were just into denial…but no…now you are just delusional!
Everypoint raised has been thoroughly and comprehensively debunked. But I guess you guys still believe in the Tooth Fairy…LOL
Thanks, Louis. I’m putting my money on David’s prediction of a two degree drop in temperatures.
El Gordo
I just learnt that Inigo Jone’s had his predictions right but was 11 years out, a sunspot cycle, so it might be interesting to review his work in the light of this.
What an amazing nonsense post that predictably has drawn the slavish adoration of the denialist scum zombies.
Michael simply can’t help himself – Point (1) and we’re into framing “it’s the AGW movement”. No it’s not the AGW movement. There’s an intergovernmental science analysis which is more impressive than Michael’s bit of rat dirt. But that’s OK – we’ll just use denialist scum as a bit of balance.
The vast slew of the temperature evolution analysis presented if utter nonsense and is simply fanciful misrepresentation. Which is why we never trust denialist scum. There is a clear warming signal from the mid 1800s and you’d have to be a mug to not be impressed with the trend. PC1 from Parker et al. It is as simple as that. And look Mum – no land stations (not that it matters).
But hey Michael’s had a look outside in Victoria – ignoring all the Australian literature (which we know boys and girls you can’t trust – coz there’s a massive global conspiracy involving 1000’s of scientists). So Michael checking out the back of his kitchen cupboard thinks the universe is improbable. But not to let logic get in the way – he then goes on to about the meaning of that false trend ??
And then the refuge of all good denialist scoundrels – CO2 as plant food. Magic pixie dust. But let’s not talk field trials – let’s look into glasshouses where we’re all nice and warm and well fed. Try learning about limiting effects – which for plants might be temperature, radiation, water, nutrients or hey even CO2. But try dropped a bag of urea on a droughted wheat crop. Doesn’t seem to do much.
No consideration of C3 woodies choking out savannas. No consideration of extra CO2 making crop plants more frost tolerant. CO2 – it’s all just ticketedy boo. (hope some halwit says – but there’ll be no more frosts !)
And we all rejoice in the fact that CO2 may have been 1000ppm in the deep pre-historic past and look – voila – life is still here. Pity about the millions of species that didn’t make it. Humanity itself looks to have gone close. Now I wonder why many of the millions of species didn’t make it? hmmmm….
But hey a graph of 150 years of temperature evolution that is a combination of solar and greenhouse forcing well explained by science and replicated by models. And only one explanation for the late 20th century behaviour. But Michael’s off perving at wiggles.
A movement of the tropics and drying of the sub-tropics as predicted.
The Arctic still in a massive trend – 3rd worst year on record (But sceptics are “celebrating” – woo hoo !!) And this is with your weak Sun ??
But what’s this – “we’re now in a period of cooling” – pigs bum we are. But hey time to say denialist scum again.
Ongoing decadal variability through various oscillations (AMO, PDO etc) which encourage sceptics only to disappoint them eventually. What a venegeful God !
Wake up you drongos. Is anyone except SJT remotely near consciousness.
Although I may agree with Malcolm Hill.
My thanks to Michael Hammer for his commentary.
What a relief it is, to follow a thread on this blog without the sourness (so far…. uh-uh… too late).
In a broad sense, cohenite’s vivid comments (particularly: “AGW is the ultimate truth because it cannot be disproved”), have struck a chord with me.
Former Labor pollster Rod Cameron is quoted in today’s Australian: “….now if you go and ask Australians if they support an ETS, sure they do…..but as soon as it starts getting linked to damage to the hip pocket, that support will disappear instantly….”.
That is what is so outrageous about the current (unbelievable*) situation; there has been little honest discussion about the eventual cost to ordinary energy consumers of the proposed ETS and that it is specifically designed to obscure that cost.
* I’m over halfway into my sixties and if, say, forty years ago, someone told me that the weather would become a political issue ……….unbelievable.
SJT claims “No one has said there is a “correct” level of CO2”
The IPCC has stated very clearly that it has been downhill all the way since 1750 because of ever rising radiative forcing since then, so 270 pp. is “correct” even though life then for most of humanity (less than 1 billion) was nasty brutish and short, so how much more so for today’s 6.8 billion if SJT has his way and drives our species to the brink of extinction. James Hansen is on record again and again for saying that 350 ppm is the maximum allowable – so you are wrong twice over.
The you said “A lot of species won’t adapt [to AGW], and will die off. The scope is, as the name implies, global. Every species will find it’s climate is changing, and will be affected. This will happen in a rapid time. Many species will die out. Obviously, if the earth becomes once again a ‘verdant’ one, a lot of species adapted for their specialised local climates will not be able to adapt. Those species that are able to adapt quickly, and take advantage of rapid change will dominate. For example, weeds and other pests. There will be a huge loss of biodiversity, one of the things that makes this planet such an interesting place to live in.”
Even Lord May of the RS admitted at UNSW just 4 years ago that we have no means of knowing either how many species there have ever been or ever were at any given point in time, and still less even now (this being his own field of expertise). New species are being found on almost a daily basis as in PNG to cite just one case). What became of Darwin in this his bicentenary year, SJT, have you ever heard of him, Huxley, and Spencer? Try doing some reading – and less waffle here.
Ferdinand E: you said “In average, some 55% of the emissions (as mass, not as original anthro molecules!) remains in the atmosphere, as long as the emissions increasingly go on…”
With respect, you seem to rely on Hansen on this point! He always subtracts the actual airborne fraction of emissions from 1.00 to get his 55%. The only useful offering from CSIRO’s Canadell, Raupach, et al. at http://www.globalcarbonproject.org is the link to the lovely Corinne Le Quere’s annual data on (1) ff and LUC emissions, (2) increases in [CO2] at Mauna Loa, and the (3) resulting inferred Airborne Fraction which on their data averaged only 43% from 1958 to 2007.
As for Luke and SJT (again) with their touching concern for proliferation of weeds with rising [CO2], they have never heard of weedkiller chemicals and are of course wholly opposed to GM crops that do not need those since they soon crowd out the non-GM weeds.
Luke, do get up to speed on the FACE literature, the NIPCC (2009) has an admirable 200 page summary crop by crop.
SJT claims “No one has said there is a “correct” level of CO2″
The IPCC has stated very clearly that it has been downhill all the way since 1750 because of ever rising radiative forcing since then, so 270 pp. is “correct” even though life then for most of humanity (less than 1 billion) was nasty brutish and short, so how much more so for today’s 6.8 billion if SJT has his way and drives our species to the brink of extinction. James Hansen is on record again and again for saying that 350 ppm is the maximum allowable – so you are wrong twice over.
There is a level that life has adapted to.
As for Luke and SJT (again) with their touching concern for proliferation of weeds with rising [CO2], they have never heard of weedkiller chemicals and are of course wholly opposed to GM crops that do not need those since they soon crowd out the non-GM weeds.
I don’t think you know how it works. The GM crops have been modified to tolerate proprietary weed killers. They don’t crowd them out, you grow the Monsanto seeds that tolerate the Monsanto weed killer.
Ferdinand wrote, “Indeed, one can see that nature – even for CO2 – has some feedback mechanisms to keep the levels within workable limits…”
I read an article recently which suggested that during periods of very low CO2 concentrations, forests give way to grasslands thereby reducing the CO2 requirement. Could this be classed as a negetive feedback ?
Extinctions due to AGW; not really;
http://www.co2science.org/subject/e/summaries/extinctionmodel.php
But the psychology behind the accusation is a doozy: paranoic, misonewistic; I guess alarmists are not just wowsers but control freaks as well; I can just see the AGW gestapo going around to make sure everything is in its place and nothing is out of order; the syndrome here seems to be extreme stasism, that perfection can be sustained only through immutability; luke and little will should read ‘Ode to a Grecian Urn’; the price for what they desire is a loss of humanity.
Something more sensible; that is Ferdinand’s well-argued supposition that the increase in CO2 is due entirely to ACO2; it has been fairly well established that sinks are increasing, particularly biomass; it occurs to me that if sinks are increasing why can’t natural emissions also be increasing; as Ferdinand has observed emissions from rotting vegetation can be a major source of CO2; has anyone estimated the CO2 emissions from the annual burn-off in Indonesia?
Luke; sorry but I cannot understand what you are saying.
SJT I have to agree with your comment about GM crops. Specifially they are engineered to be resistant to glyphosate weed killer so that once planted, the entire crop can be sprayed with glyphosate which kills the weeds while leaving the crop undamaged. The point is one still has to spray.
I do not however agree with your point that a 3 degree change in temperature in some parts of the world (not in the tropics, the negative feedback – in this case cooling, through latent heat of evaporating water is simply too high) will inevitably lead to wide spread extinctions. Extinctions can readily be caused by harsher conditions but I don’t think one can assume more benign conditions will necessarily do so. I admit I can’t prove it but then I don’t think you can prove the converse either.
Derek what you describe in the change from forest to grass land would clearly be a form of negative feedback because the forcing is a reduction in CO2 and the response of the system is a change to reduce the need for CO2. If CO2 useage declines then the CO2 level does not fall as far as it otherwise would hence the impact of the forcing is mitigated. I think you will find if you examine natural systems that negative feedback is almost universal. Indeed my statement is almost autological because any system that displayed no negative feedback or worse positive feedback would have gone unstable and destroyed itself a long time ago.
There is an article on todays ICECAP that is positively scary. I mentioned in the article above that there was talk about imposing rationing on individuals in England. The article in ICECAP reports on a company in England which apparently insists its employees provide details of their private energy useage – note: private as in at home not work. If their energy consumption exceeds an arbitrary limit set by the company the employee is fined and his or her pay docked! The limit declines each year. The article states the company is extending the scheme world wide including America and they are talking to other prominent companies about the scheme. Dare I say, to take a line from the AGW alarmists – its worse than I predicted.
Further note in the article, one employee stated he avoided the fine the previous year by changing his car from an RX8 to a Pugeot diesel. This year he avoided a fine because his wife had a baby and he barely left the house except to goto work. Does this mean we will have to accept a form of house arrest to avoid fines. Sure, he did it voluntarily but many others will be doing it under duress.
I remember reading a comment some years ago – wish I could find the source now but in essence it stated. There are three times an approaching disaster can be identified (he drew a parallel with a train wreck). Firstly it can be seen when the train is far off on the horizon but the smoke from the stack can be seen and the danger inferred. This takes skill in observing and inferring consequences. The seond time is when the train is bearing down. This only takes an ability to see. The third time is when the train hits you and that takes no skill at all. It seems to me that if true, these events constitute a train bearing down on us. The next stage if we allow this to continue will be when the ration cards arrive in the mail.
Ignorant as usual Tim – you’re not an eco-physiologist’s bootstrap. They’re not those sort of weeds matey. Wakey wakey. We’re talking the native trees and shrubs in savanna woodlands which cover much of the globe. Now wonder I get cross with you ! It’s called woody “weed” encroachment, shrubland invasion, woodland thickening. See southern USA, southern Africa, Australia.
Do try to keep on the page Tim.
Michael – I did not say that massive extinctions would occur. And more verballing by Cohenite. Simply that previous massive climate upheavals in geological time have seen massive extinctions. Genetic analyses and climate also indicate humanity itself went close to the brink.
Any sensible plant ecologist will tell you that a massive CO2 spike on a climate change backdrop is really an unknown quantity. Failure by yourself and Tim to fully reveal the ecological implications of a rapidly changing CO2 environment is failing to show a duty of care to the readers. Tim indeed needs to go back to school. Very disappointing. Michael your entire plants and CO2 discussion is an amateurish trivialisation.
Michael you have failed to discuss the widening tropics and drying sub-tropics. A massive effect on humanity in a short period. No discussion on the Australian literature – STR, SAM, weakening of the Walker circulation, changes in the IOD, warming Tasman, warming north-eastern and north-western reef currents. Interaction of stratospheric ozone depletion with increasing tropospheric greenhouse gases. Ever think to look at inland Qld or NSW temperatures?
Michael if you did you might be much less sceptical.
Now Luke, all you have to do is show us one of these past extinction events that was due to warm weather.
Mike: A very good article, worthy of wider dissemination. You have a lot of good support and of course the usual incomprehensible mumbo-jumbo from Luke (is he on something that gives him a personality disorder?) and the usual denial from the slavish IPCC follower SJT, both of whom can be safely ignored.
I’m going to go through these points one by one; I’ll stop when it gets too stupid for words.
1. The AGW movement…
I’m going to go through these points one by one; I’ll stop when it gets too stupid for words.
1. The AGW movement…
LOL.
James you’re such a tedious wanker – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene–Eocene_Thermal_Maximum And it’s not warm weather tosser – it’s “rapid change”.
Phillip Blaby- mate you’re too stupid to work out when your chain is being pulled. Join the denialist scum conga line. Cha cha cha cha – cha . You know how it goes. Don’t think – just bop to the beat. Resume the elephant walk.
The Walker is not weakening;
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2009/08/articletxt.pdf
RW, get back to your self-flagellation; your penance is incomplete.
“rapid change”; look to the skies luke,
http://www.pnas.org/content/104/41/16016.full.pdf
Oh, you’re already looking to the skies, following Philipona around with his little gizmos.
” Although I may agree with Malcolm Hill.”
Bloody hell Walker– what have I done to deserve that.?
As always well structure questions relating to the robustness of the AGW theory are shot down with a rapid fire series of rants and ravings.
After reading Michaels article i beleive points 9 and 13 are the most relavent.
Point 9
The AGW theory espoused by the IPCC does not allow for a -ve feed back from rising CO2, in other words the only way temps can fall is if CO2 levels fall, which is why we are all standing on the precipice of massive CO2 taxation. But yet we have a problem, CO2 levels are rising whilst temps are not. I have asked this very same question to the armageddon alarmists (AA)on other sites and all i get in response is “aw gee schucks thats just weather” this response is of course highly inadequate and has no scientific basis at all.
I see here also that the AA’s have no adequate explanation to this problem.
Point 13
To be blunt, the oceans are cooling slightly, the atmosphere is not warming (slight cooling) so where is the heat? Where is the accumilation of heat that should be present as CO2 levels continue to rise? Can anyone answer this question?
I beleive Michael left out one additional point the AA’s claim CO2 drives the temp but yet ice core data shows otherwise, in fact the ice core data shows that at times there is absolutely no correlation between CO2 and temp and when it does it clearly shows CO2 lagging temp by hundreds of years, can anyone explain why the last 30 years CO2 now drives the temp defying the geological record?
Anyone?
Ice core sequences are IRRELEVANT – totally irrelevant. If you think about it for 20 seconds it’s solar energy that provide the radiation that is recycled to make the greenhouse effect.
The reason ice ages end is because insolation (solar) increases due to orbital position (Milankovitch).
CO2 would have to follow. It’s not driving the change. CO2 forcing will eventually feedback and increase the warming but not drive it. Anyone who brings this issue up against AGW has not thought about it for more than 20 seconds. It’s really a silly trivialisation.
Want to see something more like AGW – see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleocene%E2%80%93Eocene_Thermal_Maximum
Also see Royer – http://droyer.web.wesleyan.edu/climate_sensitivity.pdf
As for the oceans “cooling” – well not really – stasis at best. Combine a quiet sun (less energy for greenhouse) and decadal Pacific overturnings – all not surprising. Has happened plenty times before. And indeed indivdual GCMs runs do NOT show montonic relentless warming. The broad upwards trend line will wiggle.
All of this is nothing new.
Little Lukey:
“Ice core sequences are IRRELEVANT – totally irrelevant.”
Look out!! You are verging on total blasphemy. Both Gore and Hansen will come by and you will be flash frozen and bored for a personal ice core!!
HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA
Crakar14: We are getting off the topic a little with ice cores, but as assertions about ice cores and CO2 have been made by “AGW sceptics”, and as you have now raised the issue, I’d like to pose a question (or two).
If you believe that “the ice core data” (by which I assume you mean all ice core data) shows “CO2 lagging temperature by hundreds of years” (by which I assume you mean lagging all temperatures), then perhaps you can explain the following sentence from the abstract of the oft-cited paper by N. Caillon et al. (Timing of Atmospheric CO2 and Antarctic Temperature Changes Across Termination III, Science, v. 297, p 1728 (2003)): “The sequence of events during Termination III suggests that the CO2 increase lagged Antarctic deglacial warming by 800 +/- 200 years and preceded the Northern Hemisphere deglaciation.”
If the Antarctic warming preceded CO2 increase, and then the NH warming followed that, which is cause and which effect?
cheers
Kuhnkat,
the ice-core data mentioned by Crakar and other “AGW sceptics” are derived from DEGLACIATIONS (or other types of inter-glacial events). As far as I am aware, we are not at present in the middle of a deglaciation.
First point
Fascinating stuff Luke, so what you are saying is, the Earth emerged from the last ice age because the sun caused the TEMPERATURE to rise which in turn caused the CO2 levels to rise just as the ice cores show us. But then you go on to say CO2 suddenly causes the temp to rise (i thought you said the sun did this?) and of course the evidence used to prove your hypothesis wrong has already been condemned to irrelevance. How convenient.
So taking your hypothesis to its logical conclusion, the CO2 rises causing the temp to rise, which in turn produces water vapour (and some more CO2) through ice and ocean evaporation which in turn causes the temp to rise,
which in turn produces water vapour (and some more CO2) through ice and ocean evaporation which in turn causes the temp to rise,
which in turn produces water vapour (and some more CO2) through ice and ocean evaporation which in turn causes the temp to rise. Do you see where i am going with this?
So what happened next? What stopped this thermal runaway that if left unchecked will cause catastrophic climate change. There must have been a -ve feed back in there somewhere Luke, What was this -ve feed back and is it still present today?
Second point
Lets call it a stasis.
Sorry Luke as shown in the first point above you cannot have your cake and eat it too, the suns TSI is virtually unchanged and has very little impact on climate (IPCC reg TM). So no the sun cannot be blamed for any of this.
Suddenly now the PDO has an effect does it? You better let the IPCC know about your new little hypothesis because they seem to have over looked this.
Luke, you can ramble on all you like but your post has simply reinforced Michaels very well written views, if the sun and the PDO can overcome the effects of AGW and the sun and the PDO have very little effect on climate as the IPCC say then AGW has a very very weak effect on global temps.
I suspect the IPCC has well and truly over exaggerated climate sensitivity and the very strong +ve feed back from water vapour which the IPCC relies heavily on is in fact most likely a -ve feed back.
3rd point
Once again Luke you are eating the very cake you made, GCM’s are based on theory, they are therefore a physical extension of the theory. GCMs are used to predict/project future climate scenarios. If the predictions/projections are incorrect then ergo the theory must also be incorrect.
Can you show me a GCM that has any ACCURATE predictive power Luke? The only ones i can find have so far failed dismally.
pd; if the Antarctic warming kicks off CO2 increase which then warms/melts the Arctic then why didn’t the CO2 effect snowball and finish the job at the Antarctic? If this didn’t happen then was it due to uneven mix of CO2? If CO2 does threaten tipping points why haven’t hey happened in the past;
http://www.nytimes.com/imagepages/2006/11/06/science/earth/20061107_CO2_GRAPHIC.html
But the real problem for AGW intellectuals like pd is that CO2 doesn’t really follow temperature at all;
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2,Temperaturesandiceages-f.pdf
In fact as the key graphs dealing with temperature decline show, if the feedback effect from CO2 worked CO2 would precede temperature on the decline; it doesn’t and actually temperature declines while CO2 levels are still relatively high; the conclusion is that temperature may effect CO2 levels but CO2 levels do not effect temperature.
Thanks Cohenite,
Peterd i cannot read the entire paper as i am a cheap bastard and refuse to pay. So i will take you at your word.
To be honest i was a bit confused by your question, you say “If the Antarctic warming preceded CO2 increase, and then the NH warming followed that, which is cause and which effect?”
Havent you already answered the question? Just for clarity, If the antarctic warming preceded the CO2 increase by 800 +/- 200 years……………………….
Without reading the paper could it be possible that the Earth warmed by some mechanism other than CO2? Then this warmth allowed CO2 to be released from oceans/melting ice etc in the sth hemisphere.
We then need to take a leap of faith and accept that the very thing that began the warming suddenly stopped! And Co2 took on a life of its own and warmed the Nth Hemisphere?
But once again as aluded to by Cohenite what -ve feed back mechanism kicked into gear and stopped the planet from boiling dry?
Its not enough to postulate a hypothesis up to and including what suits you but then stop there, you also need to explain the entire process, this is where the whole thing falls down for the alarmists.
So peterd can you explain how the sun can warm the sth hemisphere but inexplicably leave it up to nasty CO2 to warm the Nth Hemisphere, can you also explain (in detail if possible) what -ve feedback stopped CO2 levels from increasing unhindered to the present day?
By the way whilst this is slightly off topic it does carry the general theme in that it is another falsifiable test that can be applied to the agw theory.
Crakar,
anyone can get a FREE access to Science for full coverage of research papers more than 12 months old. Just go to Science online and sign up. I”m always behind in my reading, but that’s how I get stuff more than 12 months old. Newer material requires that I visit a university library.
Who said that “nasty CO2” warmed the NH? The rise in CO2 at termination (~80 ppmv, net) was insufficient to cause the full temp. increase across termination (~6 Celsius). I posed matters with my question to try to get you to realise that if you- or toehr “sceptics”- assert that “the ice cores show CO2 lags temperature”, which seems to have become a miindless slogan, then you have some problem explaining the NH warming, which followed the CO2 rise. Apparently, you still don’t quite see the difficulty…..
Of course the warming that began the terminations happened by some mechanism other than CO2. Don’t you know that’s it’s accepted in climate-research circles that it is the change in insolation (Milankovitch forcing) that leads to the end of ice ages?
We’re still off-topic here, in terms of Michael Hammer’s points, but as I suspect he thinks a little like you and Cohenite on this issue, I’ll let this unwind…
cheers
cohenite: like many “sceptics”, you pose- in your characteristically immodest and supercilious way- the relationship between CO2 and temperature at termination incorrectly. You seem to be asserting that temp going up leads to CO2 going up, which leads to temp going up which leads to…..and so on, the implication being that runaway is bound to occur. As runaway evidently has not occurred, this is supposed to “prove” that CO2 cannot be acting as amplifier of the initial warming. There is no need to assume that things happen that way. First, the amplification of the warming due to CO2 is relatively small, about 1/3 of the total 6 C (global) change. Further, there are, of course, negative feedbacks that eventually check the warming, and the main one is the increased blackbody emission to space. It is curious to me that so many “AGW sceptics”, such as Michael Hammer, assert the importance of negative feedback in climate, but entirely ignore them when the matter of glacial terminations is discussed. The insolation change is insufficient to explain the full temp. increase at termination. This is why additional amplifiers, cuch as GHGs (CO2, methane) are hypothesized. The CO2 rise, of “only” 80 ppmv (net) is also insufficient to explain the full change. This explanation of terminations, in terms of an initial warming induced by changing insolation, which is then amplified in part by the CO2 outgassing from the oceans, is pretty widely accepted in the climate-research community, and if you doubt it, I invite you to come up with your own explanation of terminations and of the magnitudes of the observed effects. Then you should publish it. For the present, I prefer to accept what the experts say, not what the “sceptics” say on websites such as this.
As for Mr Lansner (yet another “Engineer (ret.)”?), I checked the first link he provided and noted the following (point 3), already known to me: “The CO2 and temperature signals are not directly comparable. This is because the temperature signal is local, whereas the CO2 signal is global.” Mr Lansner may be over-interpreting the data. Again, if Mr Lansner is right, why doesn’t he publish?
Crakar: “We then need to take a leap of faith and accept that the very thing that began the warming suddenly stopped! And Co2 took on a life of its own and warmed the Nth Hemisphere?”
I forgot to add: no, it didn’t suddenly stop. The last deglaciation took place over 5000 years. It began with warming of the southern oceans. Insolation was still changing during this time. The CO2 was not involved in the first 800+/-200 years of this warming, but was (presumably) in the last 4000 years or so. This is not happening as if taps are being turned on and off.
Luke your comment that ice core data is IRRELEVANT really surprises me. This is the data which started the whole scare campaign. It is the data the Al Gore relies on extremely heaviy in his film an incovenient truth. It is one of the very few pieces of real experiental data yet now you say its irrelevant. Your comment begs the question why was it relevant then and not relevant now? What changed? This is exactly the sort of constant changing of story that I was referring to in the article. My experience over 30 years of research is that such actions are inevitably a sign of a flawed hypothesis.
I can only re-iterate my view again. CO2 is a green house gas and increasing the concentration does to some degree increase the energy retained. To that extent the AGW hypothesis is QUALITATIVELY supportable. The issue is the MAGNITUDE of the effect. If I simply use the IPCC numbers for incremental impact of CO2 (I think their number is a bit high but never mind) clearly it is not enough to cause the projected warming and the AGW proponents also acknowledge this.
To get anywhere near the claimed warming one needs to invoke ver strong net positive feedback. For several reasons I think that is wrong – universality of negative feedback in nature, my cloud analysis in the article etc.
Also I don’t see how one can have it both ways. If CO2 caused all the warming between 1975 and 1998 then solar and ocean cycles are of very small effect (as IPCC stated in thier earlier reports). If that is the case then they cannot be used to explain the current lack of warming, in which case what is causing it. If ocean cycles and solar impact is significant enough to be responsible for the current lack of warming then they would have been significant in the 1975 to 1998 period as well. Either way there is a significant problem with the AGW theory. Worse, the relative magnitude of the actual change against the projected future impact is not consistent.
As a reality check one needs to ask oneself what has actually happened so far and what evidence is that thigs are going to get very extravagantly worse in the next 50 years.
Peterd
Is the climate science’s explanation for ice age waxing an waning during the geological timescale?
Because we geologists haven’t worked it out. We still haven’t worked out what caused the LIA either.
There is an interesting map showing Antartica ice free – it’s pretty accurate but it’s dating is around the MWP – if the map is true and accurate means all the conclusions from the ice cores become problematical.
But then what would I know as a mere empiricist steeped in the Aristotelian world view. I could never hope to emulate, let alone outshine the rhetoric of the climatologists (like astrologists).
Apology: my reference was to Caillon et al, which treated Termination III, which was not, of course, the last. My mistake. That’s what comes of trying to type too much too fast.
“characteristically immodest and supercilious way”; what crap, I’m talking to you aren’t I, how modest have I got to be to do that? Your points about blackbody radiation to space is well covered by Lindzen’s new paper on ERBE showing increased OLR in COMPLETE CONTRADICTION TO EVERY MODEL FORECAST. The point about “glacial terminations” is an absolute red herring; Kump and Pollard’s work shows that Milankovitch cycles don’t require CO2 to boast the initial insolation effect but that cloud variation and albedo effects can more than do the job. I might add that the glaciation argument was used in reverse to critique the homeostatic paradigm of a maximum greenhouse effect in such papers as Miskolczi and Paltridge on MEP; that is, if CO2 increase didn’t produce the interglacials then CO2 decrease couldn’t produce the glacials; here is another viewpoint, published;
http://landshape.org/enm/wp-content/uploads/2008/06/AIGnewsSC.pdf
Re Comment from: Luke September 21st, 2009 at 11:37 pm
“They’re not those sort of weeds matey. Wakey wakey. We’re talking the native trees and shrubs in savanna woodlands which cover much of the globe. Now wonder I get cross with you ! It’s called woody “weed” encroachment, shrubland invasion, woodland thickening. See southern USA, southern Africa, Australia’.
Luke – I have never seen it in Southern Africa, and “woodland thickening” is what Ross Garnaut advocates here in place of all agriculture and livestock raising (to please the Brook-Singer-Russell vegans). Ironically, while the Garnaut report endorsed both the Enting-Karoly view that CO2 uplifts by vegetation will decline with GW and the Canadell view that the global biota is already close to “saturated”, elsewhere, he again here (ANU) last week advocated massive woodland thickening on all croplands to reduce [CO2].
Your page mate!
Yes Tim, that’s a pearler; on the one hand saying sinks are saturated and similtaneously advocating the use of one of those saturated sinks to solve the ‘problem’ of too much CO2.
What an amazing amount of dross – has the warming reflected in the GMST dropped back dropped back to 1850s levels – I don’t think so. It’s a wiggle lads. A statis. A wiggle in a long upwards climb which will redistribute climate system on planet Earth. A planet with 6B humans going 9B. Have a rerun of the MWP mega-droughts and you’ll have a Chinese battle group off Cairns.
Then we have the old southern vs northern hemisphere debate – certainly is fright night isn’t it.
And yep the ice core CO2 lags the temp is irrelevant. Only modelling (the making of some formal calculations) could show it which you guys wouldn’t accept. As Loutre showed a long time ago – you can’t get the planet to glaciate without low CO2.
See the PETM dudes !
And Dear Dear Tim – by now you’d have worked out I’d be prepared to back it up !
An extensive African literature by Scholes, Archer and Walker over many years on shrub encroachment.
Scholes, R.J. and Archer, S.R. (1997). Tree-grass interactions in savannas. Annual Review of
Ecology and Systematics 28: 517-544.
http://cat.inist.fr/?aModele=afficheN&cpsidt=1103829
In Australia http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/118961407/abstract
But Google the many works of W Burrows on woodland thickening in Australia/Queensland. You’ll enjoy the heresy towards the national greenhouse accounts.
Luke,
Loutre’s evidence is based on modeling – I hope she has the associated mass extinctions factored in as well, because one doesn’t seem to happen without the other.
No one knows what causes ice ages at present.
“….It’s a wiggle lads. A statis [sic]…..”
Whatever caused the temperature rise 1850-1940, it was not the burning of fossil fuels.
http://photos.mongabay.com/09/0323co2emissions_global.jpg
1940-1980 …… “statis”.
2000-2010 …….”statis”.
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:2010/mean:13/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1980/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1980/to:2000/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:2000/to:2010/trend
Tim Curtin September 21st, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Tim, I used the emissions figures as is and the ice core (up to 1960) and MLO data from 1959 on. That gives a very straight line with extremely good correlation between the accumulated CO2 emissions and the accumulation of CO2 in the atmosphere. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
The difference with the other data is that SCIRO’s include deforestation, which is quite uncertain… Nevertheless there is little doubt that humans are responsible for the increase in CO2 since the start of the industrial revolution. Which doesn’t imply that the impact of the increase leads to a catastrophe…
Chrisgo – the trend from 1900 is pretty obvious – http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1800/to:2010/mean:13
Well correlated with CO2 (but we all know there are other factors) e.g.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Climate_Change_Attribution.png
The case is overwhelming for AGW !
peterd September 22nd, 2009 at 5:36 pm
“The insolation change is insufficient to explain the full temp. increase at termination.”
Indeed, according to the climate models… But that is the main problem. There is no guarantee that the models include the right parameters: what about the ice albedo, aerosols and most important, clouds during the transitions?
There is an inverse correlation between low level clouds and solar strength. That means that a small change in solar irradiation (TOA) is amplified (especially in the tropics), whatever the mechanism (IR, GCR,…) behind it. No GCM takes that into account (only for GHGs, not for solar). Thus even a small underestimate of the cloud albedo effect would compensate for the need of a GHG feedback on temperature.
Further, although the data are far too coarse for a robust conclusion, the trends of the detailed Dome C investigation don’t show any feedback from CO2 on temperature, which should be the case:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/epica5.gif
With thanks to André van den Berg, who supplied the graph.
Hi Luke, you might not have read my answer to your earlier questions, it’s the second to last response on the
“More Smearing of Scientific Scepticism (Part 2)” blog.
Anyway, I actually like Michael’s article, it resonates with me and in the interest of fairness I wonder if you could guide me to a comparable article promoting the AGW side. Not a point by point refutation of this article but rather arguments promoting your position. I found out today that our SOSE teacher got his year 10 class to write an essay on climate change where they had to present both sides of the argument and were marked down for showing bias.
“The trend from 1900 is pretty obvious”; how do you live with your-self? Here are the IPCC trends;
http://noconsensus.files.wordpress.com/2009/04/image102.jpg
Here are the comparative trends;
http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b370/gatemaster99/warmtwice.png
And here is the clincher for the CO2/temp connection;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/esrl-co2/from:1998/offset:-347/scale:0.008/trend/plot/uah/from:1998/trend
To Mike Hammer and Luke & co.
Eureka!
I have at last rumbled the great Madoffian Climate Fraud.
And I have done this without in any way denying the basic Math of AR4 WG1, p.141.
Thus I accept that Radiative Forcing in watts/sq metre is given by this formula:
RF = 5.35 * ln(Ct/Co) where 5.35 is a constant, ln is log normal, Co = [CO2] in 1750, at 279 ppm, and Ct = current year [CO2], 379 ppm in 2005, and about 389 in 2008/9. This formula yields a logarithimic increase in RF for each and every increase in [CO2], of
0.026683347 W/sq metre.
If [CO2] grows at 0.5% p.a. as it did (briefly) between 1998 and 2005, this produces 750 ppm (near doubling from the present level) by 2150 for an increase in temperature to 16.60 oC from the GISS level of 14.58 oC in 1998. If however [CO2] grows at only the average rate from 1958 to 2008 of 0.4% pa from say 2012, the ppm only reach 680 by 2150 for GISS temp of 16.23 oC, a rise of only 1.67 oC from 1998.
But much more fun is to project the annual rise in [CO2], as the total AGW fraternity prefer, at 1% p.a. from now, then bingo, we have total [CO2] doubling by 2080 to 780 ppm with the wholly delightful, for all in Copenhagen, rise in GISS, to 16.6 oC, up 2 oC in just 70 years instead of the boring 140+ years implied by the actual rates of [CO2] growth and the IPCC’s magic lozenge formula for getting changes in Temperature from that Radiative Forcing formula noted above, typically about 0.5 K/(Wm-2) (TAR, 2001, p.354, and Ramanathan et al., 1985).
If this is not charlatanry, what would be?
Trenberth, Susie Solomon, all Meinshausens, Schellenhubers Rahmstorfs and the rest of the Stasi gang at Potsdam’s PIK including sod, and our own Wigley, Enting, Karoly, Will Steffen, Garnaut, and Luke, inter all too many other al Gores, will join Bernard Madoff in his penitentiary when us Climate Sceptics win power. Watch this space – and forward to APRA.
Oh and here are the relevant linear trends in luke’s HadCRUT temperature history;
http://www.woodfortrees.org/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1800/to:2010/mean:13/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1850/to:1910/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1910/to:1940/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1940/to:1976/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1976/to:1998/trend/plot/hadcrut3vgl/from:1998/to:2010/trend
Tim Curtin wrote:
Would it be:
* suggesting that cause happens after effect.
* suggesting that sea level rise has increased by using incompatible measurements systems, even though both systems show a slight downturn of late.
* suggesting that when CO2 output is higher than projected, yet temperatures are lower than projected, things are “worse than we thought”.
* using models for purposes for which they are unfit.
* suggesting that the oceans are “acidifying”, when they are still base, and have changed less than 1/10th of one unit of PH.
* suggesting that such “acidification” will destroy reefs etc without bothering to actually perform experiments to see what the effect actually is.
* offering up “scary scenarios” and “downplaying any doubts” in order to get people to act when they othrewise wouldn’t.
* attacking the messenger rather than the data and methods of those who disagree with you.
* changing what the “evidence” is when the evidence is shown to be falsified.
* cherry picking and data mining.
* ignoring the advise of expert statisticians.
* using the same data to generate and “validate” your theory.
* suggesting that when your predictions do not come true, it’s more likely that the data is wrong than your theory is wrong.
* finding “signals” that are of a smaller level than the resolution of your data.
* suggesting that wind sensors produce more accurate temperature data than a thermometer on the same platform.
* refusing to provide data and methods to those antagonistic to your theory.
and so on. There’s plenty of stuff to make you pause, but of course, it “doesn’t matter” because they’ve “moved on” – that part of the evidence you just showed was an artifact of the method used to analyse it “doesn’t matter” any more, we have a “new method” and other data that support the theory don’t you know! Overwhelming evidence in support of the theory, you see – nothing that shows it directly of course, but plenty that supports it. We ignore the bits that contradict it – they’re only produced by those in the pay of big oil and big coal, don’t you know? You just ignore that they only have 1/1000th of the money spent on them, you just ignore that energy companies are salivating at the prospect of cap-and-trade and the profits they can make speculating on such derivatives and listen to us. We’re the experts on climate, we know what we’re talking about! And you pesky statisticians had better shut up about our methods – what do you know about climate?
Neil Fisher – thanks for your analysis of the denialist filth movement. Spot on.
Timmy – you’re such a single factor guy. Uniformitarian – single regression Tim. And Timmy don’t think you’re getting to be a bit of a nutter when the number of people you’re going to lock up are exponentiating. Don’t think you’re a wee bit of a ranting old wanker.
Cocho – hahahahahahahahahahahha – only a stupid lawyer could try to spin that- let’s look at a collection PC3s. We’ll count all the gazelles – but alas Coho missed the elephant and was squashed. hahahahahahahahahaha mate – keep’em coming .
MH: “Luke your comment that ice core data is IRRELEVANT really surprises me. This is the data which started the whole scare campaign. It is the data the Al Gore relies on extremely heaviy in his film an incovenient truth. It is one of the very few pieces of real experiental data yet now you say its irrelevant. Your comment begs the question why was it relevant then and not relevant now? What changed? This is exactly the sort of constant changing of story that I was referring to in the article. My experience over 30 years of research is that such actions are inevitably a sign of a flawed hypothesis.”
Michael, I question the accuracy of your claim that “[t]his is the data which started the whole scare campaign.” I also now think that this data was overplayed in Gore’s film; the complexities can’t be treated adequately in that format.
But just what is the relevance to the present situation? The ice cores have usually been cited to describe behaviour at terminations. We are not at termination now. CO2 is being added by industrial activity, at a faster rate than it is being taken up by oceans (which were net source, not sink, at termination. So: What is the relevance? As Luke noted, a better indicator as to the effects of CO2 may be found in the PETM.
The PETM, yeah right;
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n8/abs/ngeo578.html
luke, you are enamoured of the EOFs of Parker et al; but the EOF1 is irrelevant for purposes of the AGW effect unless you argure as some of your other heros do, Vecchi, Meehl, Cai and the Modoki mob, that the natural or stationary factors have become dependent or corrupted by the AGW effect; but even if AGW is transforming ENSO into a bigger, more frequent events how can AGW effect 100-200 year or more cycles?
Neil Fisher;
you put it so much more economically and explicitly than I managed to. nicely put
Well they have – STR for one ! Walker circ. IOD, SAM, PDO bumped
Peterd;
I am not saying ice core data is relevant or irrelevant. I am saying that the AGW movement in the past declared it not just as relevant but defining ie: proof. It was the dominant theme of previous IPCC reports and certainly the main issue in Al Gore’s movie. This was when it seemed to supporty the AGW theory. Now it does not support the thoery it is declared irrelevant. I am pointing out that this tendancy to define relevance based on whether it supoprts your theory or not is a clear mark of a theory being unjustifiably promoted. An abandonment of the fundamental basis of scientific research. I believe that needs to be pointed out.
Luke wrote:
Alas for you Luke, these all come from the alarmist side – would you like me to document them for you?
Thanks for the link, Cohenite. It looks as though I’ll have to visit my library again to get the full paper.
I note that lead author Zeebe had this to say: “”By continuing to put these huge amounts of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere, we’re gambling with climate and the outcome is still uncertain.”
http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2009-07/uoha-ag071609.php
You endorsed (by implication) the paper’s conclusions. Do you endorse Zeebe’s statement?
Actually Michael, if i may.
Previous to when Al made his movie the original ice core data showed that CO2 and temp changed around the same time this was due to our inability to resolve time below 2000 years. This data was siezed upon by Hansen et al as the smoking gun of AGW.
A few years later our time resolution improved and as we all now know CO2 lags temp by 800 odd years, however this did not stop Al Gore. In his movie he uses the old ice core data to show CO2 leading the Temp. Now this was/is a complete fabrication infact i would call it fraud. Now why would Al Gore need to lie about the data he was presenting in his movie? The answer is obvious of course, never the less the fraudulent use of data went unchallenged and the peterd’s of this world dont seem to be bothered by this, brings new meaning to “An inconvenient truth” doesn’t it.
pd; you see what you want to I guess; this from the abstract;
“At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration1, this rise in CO2 can explain only between 1 and 3.5 °C of the warming inferred from proxy records. We conclude that in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the Palaeocene–Eocene Thermal Maximum.”
Key words; “At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration”; that official IPCC sensitivity of 3C increase for a doubling of CO2 has been completely rebutted, so what we have here is a paper by some pro-AGW scientists using the accepted, grossly over-estimated value for AGW sensitivity and finding even by those standards that CO2 is monstered by other natural processes.
In reply to Zeebe’s precautionary principle statement my reply is no I do not endorse his statement; humanity must encroach on nature to prosper; it is in humanity’s best interests to be fully informed of the consequences of those inevitable encroachments; but the evidence of those consequences must not be tainted by ideological filters such as the Malthusian and eugenic misanthropy that we see coming out to support AGW. I’m not suggesting Zeebe is a Malthusian but he may be paying lip service to that insidious influence and it is not the first time I have seen a token disavowal contradicting the gist of a paper challenging AGW.
Crakar: “In his movie he uses the old ice core data to show CO2 leading the Temp.”
No, he didn’t.
What “old ice core data”? The so-called “new” data is, as I understand, pretty much the “old” (ice) data but with improved accuracy in the relative timing of the changes in temp. and GHG concentrations. This was possible through improved methods of determining the ice age-gas age difference.
Note that Gore doesn’t say in the movie that “CO2 leads temperature”, or that “rising CO2 causes the temperature to rise”, or other equivalent expression. What he says is that “they fit”. Here’s some of the text, word for word (a chunk in the middle is omitted), from the relevant portion of the film: “If you compare a thousand years of temperature, and a thousand years of CO2, you can see how closely they fit together. Now a thousand years of CO2 in a mountain glacier is one thing but in Antartica [sic] they can go back 650,000 yrs. This incidentally is the 1st time anybody outside of a small group of scientists has seen this image. This is the present day era and that’s the last ice age. Then it goes up………..7th ice age back. Now an important point. In all of this time, 650,000 yrs, the CO2 level has never gone above 300 ppm. Now, as I said they can also measure temp. Here is what the temperature has been on our earth. Now one thing that kinda jumps out at you is, well, let me put it this way, If my classmate from the 6th grade who talked about Africa and Sth America was here, he’d say now Do they fit together? Most ridiculous thing I ever heard. And the relationship is actually very complicated but there is one relationship that is far more powerful and it is this: When there is more carbon dioxide the temperature gets warmer because it traps more heat from the sun inside.”
He’s saying that when one goes up, the other does too; that’s correlation. CO2 is going up now. Apparently, you do not believe the temp. is going up. But what do you believe tha ice core data show us?
I believe Gore has simplified a relationship he declares to be complicated. I also believe he was well aware of leads and lags when he made the film. But his is a message for ordinary people, not scientists.
Cohenite,
I thank you again for the link. I emphasise that I have not read the full paper, only the abstract, and some of the commentary surrounding the paper. I hope to obtain the full text very soon. You accuse me of “reading what I want”, but it is you who are doing so. You wrote: “…that official IPCC sensitivity of 3C increase for a doubling of CO2 has been completely rebutted”. Yet the authors were careful to write “At accepted values for the climate sensitivity to a doubling of the atmospheric CO2 concentration”. In other words, they accept the climate sensitivity (strangely, that’s what “accepted” means), and draw the conclusion that “…in addition to direct CO2 forcing, other processes and/or feedbacks that are hitherto unknown must have caused a substantial portion of the warming during the PETM.”
Still. It’s interesting stuff, and sure to lead to deeper understanding of what’s going on.
Well, that’s about that pd; I can’t waste any more time following you around to correct your blatant misrepresentations; ie; gore and the 650,000 ice record and the correlation [sic] between CO2 and temperature; point 28 in the judgement;
http://www.bailii.org/ew/cases/EWHC/Admin/2007/2288.html
I believe gore is either a spiv or an acolyte although the 2 are not mutually exclusive, correlation can exist, you might say, and it isn’t complicated, gore and his followers are conning people. And one thing to remember about Burton’s judgement; he was sympathetic towards gore and gave him considerable latitude which would not be given today especially the idea that there is an overwhelming consensus about AGW, so this judgement is about the best that gore could have hoped for.
Tim C, Eureka indeed.
Your post at 11:10 pm yesterday shows that you can indeed handle simple physical units, as in: “…Radiative Forcing formula noted above, typically about 0.5 K/(Wm-2)”. (I would myself have made the tiniest addition to this to make it clearer that “-2” is superscripted.) So, why did you make such a hash of them in the discussion about RF and your electric power bill recently?
Last word on this Peterd,
Fact: Co2 lags temp by 800 odd years
Gore’s fiction: If you compare a thousand years of temperature, and a thousand years of CO2, you can see how closely they fit together.
Do you see the difference here peterd? Fact is spoken by scientists and little white lies are told by politicians
Now how many people would have laughed and walked out of the room if the buffoon on stage had of stated fact? Instead he mislead them by not telling them the facts, in other words he committed fraud.
No ifs buts or maybe’s here peterd, by the way there are a lot more nobler causes to believe in than this one. I suggest you start shopping around now in order to beat the rush.
Cohenite: My response was to Crakar, who claimed that Gore said “CO2 led temp.”. This is not exactly what Gore said. Burton appears (to my way of reading his judgment) to have gone further than what the text of the film implies by suggesting that Gore says “exact fit”. Plainly, it’s not exact. But Gore didn’t claim an “exact fit”, and I think Burton goes too far on this. What Gore appears to claim is that when CO2 goes up, temp. goes up, and there’s a “fit” to support it. Plainly, he wants his audience to believe that because CO2 is now going up (and has reached levels that are higher than any in the past 650,000 years), the temp. is going to go up too.
I should add that I don’t get up each day, slide the Gore dvd into the player, and sit down to watch. I became interested in this side-issue when I became aware that some people, including Michael Hammer, were criticizing Gore on this. I sat down with a library copy of the film (I wouldn’t waste my money to buy it) and played the relevant segment over and over, to get the words. They are my transcription from my own viewing.
But, in any event, noting that CO2 lags temp. at the beginning of deglaciations does not prove that CO2 cannot cause temperature increases in the present: http://www.newscientist.com/blog/environment/2007/10/al-gores-inconvenient-truth.html
Crakar:
I can tell you’re not a scientist when you write the following: “CO2 lags temp by some 800 odd years”. (As distinct from even years, I suppose. haha)
This is not accurate. You should write something such as the following: “The evidence from trapped gases in dated ice cores indicates that at the beginning of recent deglaciations (e.g., Termination III), the rise in atmospheric CO2 concentrations lagged that of temperature by 800 plus/minus 200 years. It is believed that over the remainder of the deglaciation, lasting some 5000 years in the case of TIII, the inceased CO2 contributed in some measure to amplification of the temperature rise.”
You just cannot make a blanket statement to the effect that “CO2 lags temp by some 800 odd years”.
Michael (11:44am): I think you’re overstating the case. I would not say that the ice cores (paleo) issue was either “the dominant theme of previous IPCC reports” or “certainly the main issue in Al Gore’s movie”. It was important in both, but the “dominant theme”? Not, I think. Your claim that the IPCC has dropped ice cores because they don’t “fit the theory” is simply untrue. Why is the ice-core evidence discussed at such length in the last IPCC report? (see Chapter 6, Palaeoclimate). Your implication that evidence is being “censored” because it’s “inconvenient” is false and outlandish.
Louis H: “Peterd: Is the climate science’s explanation for ice age waxing an waning during the geological timescale? Because we geologists haven’t worked it out. We still haven’t worked out what caused the LIA either. There is an interesting map showing Antartica ice free – it’s pretty accurate but it’s dating is around the MWP – if the map is true and accurate means all the conclusions from the ice cores become problematical.
But then what would I know as a mere empiricist steeped in the Aristotelian world view. I could never hope to emulate, let alone outshine the rhetoric of the climatologists (like astrologists).
Louis, I didn’t forget your question. If you’re asking me about “waxing and waning” on longer (geological) time-scales, I really don’t know. I’m no kind of geophysical or palaeoclimate specialist, just a humble physical chemist. (No, I’m not even a lawyer.) My impression is that the evidence gets more difficult to collect and interpret, the further back in time you go. But then, I might be wrong….
Ferdinand Engelbeen (9:37 pm, Sept. 22nd):
Ferdinand, I’m not really sure how to respond to your argument. I was under the impression that the insolation change accounted for most of the temperature change at deglaciation (about 4C of the global 6C), and that CO2 only needed to be “asked” to account for the remainder. At least, this appeared to be the accepted thinking at the time, when I asked someone “in the know”.
Cheers
peterd September 23rd, 2009 at 4:48 pm
Peter, in the film Al Gore (ab)used the ice core measurements as strong suggestion that CO2 is the main cause of the temperature increase. He didn’t say it literally, but his act with the lift to show how high the CO2 levels were now was fully intended to suggest to the lay public that with the higher CO2 levels we can expect a rise in temperature as fast as the CO2 levels did.
A similar approach of Gore about sea levels: a lot of impressive takes of land submerged by the rising seas, including errors (in The Netherlands), but no mentioning of the time frame…
The problem with the ice core CO2/temperature lead/lags is that there is a huge overlap, which allows the modellers to imply a (relative) huge feedback of CO2 on temperature. That is the case for all transitions, with one exception: the end of the Eemian. CO2 levels remained high while temperature (and CH4 levels) reduced to a new minimum and ice sheets increased to a new maximum. The subsequent fall of CO2 levels with 40 ppmv had no measurable effect on temperature (or ice sheets), outside the measurement accuracy. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/eemian.html
peterd September 23rd, 2009 at 5:26 pm
The feedback of CO2 during deglaciation was introduced by James Hansen, because his GCM couldn’t reach the reconstructed temperature at the height of the Eemian. Based on the difference, he concluded that the sensitivity for 2xCO2 was about 3 K. See page 6 at:
http://pubs.giss.nasa.gov/docs/2003/2003_Hansen.pdf
The only GCM I know of which covered (in part) the end of the Eemian is the Hamburg ECHO-G model which calculated the maximum and minimums of the Eemian at 125 kyr and 115 kyr BP, just before the drop in CO2 levels (113 kyr BP) with reasonable accuracy, see:
http://www.uni-mainz.de/FB/Geo/Geologie/sedi/Deklim/ppt_xls/Hamburg/eem_web_kaspar_cubasch_english.pdf
By coincidence (?), the ECHO-G model has one of the lowest sensitivities of all models: about 2 K/2xCO2
Thanks peterd, you are too kind, and perhaps do not easily detect irony. The Wiki formula for measuring “radiative forcing” has little if anything to do with it, as that is supposed to be a measure of “retained heat” at the top of the troposhere, in the form of solar radiation plus the part of that radiation that does not get back to space allegedly because of atmospheric CO2, while the formula simply measures the ratio between current [CO2] and that in the 1750 base year without any proof being offered for that ratio actually measuring retained heat as defined anywhere least of all at the top of the troposhere. Nor is there any empirical evidence for the 0.5 oK temperature rise per Watts per sq metre of RF.
For example at Mauna Loa Slope Observatory, which at 3,400 metres is relatively close to the top of the troposphere, there is NO statistically significant relationship between changes in Temperature at Mauna Loa and changes in the RF there since 1960. Thus the Adjusted R2 is a pitiful 0.09 and the coefficient does not pass the p-value test.
Moreover using the RF formula to predict actual absolute temperatures at Mauna Loa since 1959, the R2 is hardly impressive at 0.39.
Once again, if Radiative Forcing at Mauna Loa (where it is measured) cannot explain temperature variations there, it is worthless everywhere.
I am grateful to Neil Fisher for his further demonstration of the charlatanry of the whole IPCC process and all its supporters. The clinching evidence for this is in both IPCC TAR (2001) and John Houghton’s summary of that in his Global Warming. The Complete (sic) Briefing (2003).
Both rely on the SRES scenarios prepared for the IPCC, and these all refer only to Gross Anthropogenic Emissions, implying that there is now and always ZERO global biotic uptake. This is the explicit assumption in the Meinshausens et al papers (Nature 30 April 09) and by most of the other gentry I previously mentioned. Fraud is not too strong a word when the biota actually takes up around 60% of total anthropogenic emissions, and their omission enables Houghton and the IPCC to show RF of as much as 9 W/sq.m by 2100 and temperature change of up to 6 oC by 2100 (Houghton, Fig.6.4).
I know we can all mistakes, and I am far from immune, but for the total scientific community not to notice (1) that the SRES omit any biotic takeups or sequestration, and (2) that this produces gross exaggeration of BAU emissions and alleged temperature rise due to the resulting inflated RF function is nothing short of criminal, especially when the world will be condemned at Copenhagen to grinding reduction in prosperity on the basis of such quackery by the Steffens et all too many al of this world.
Peter, in the film Al Gore (ab)used the ice core measurements as strong suggestion that CO2 is the main cause of the temperature increase. He didn’t say it literally, but his act with the lift to show how high the CO2 levels were now was fully intended to suggest to the lay public that with the higher CO2 levels we can expect a rise in temperature as fast as the CO2 levels did.
A similar approach of Gore about sea levels: a lot of impressive takes of land submerged by the rising seas, including errors (in The Netherlands), but no mentioning of the time frame…
Al Gore is not the case for AGW. I haven’t seen it. CO2 is usually associated with warmer times. At present, the combination of forcings is such that CO2 is the strongest one.
SJT September 23rd, 2009 at 7:37 pm
SJT, Al Gore is the strongest advocate and convinced a lot of people (including schoolboys) that something need to be done. I agree, he is not a scientist, but James Hansen, Stephen Schneider and several others were his scientific advisors and that make me questioning the motives of these people.
Indeed the known changes in forcing are in favor of CO2 as largest, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the effects. Most climate models use a similar effect for a similar change in forcing, but that is far from sure: solar has its main effect in the tropics, as well as in the stratosphere (ozone) as in the ocean surface and on cloud cover. CO2 effects are more spread over the globe and confined to the lower troposphere and the upper fraction of a mm of the oceans. In my opinion, that are quite different effects, which may cause different sensitivities for different types of forcing. See e.g. how the HadCM3 model probably underestimates the effect of solar with a factor 2 (within the constraints of the model!):
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
And don’t forget what the internal variability of the oceans/atmosphere system may cause. Current models were mainly developed in the warming period 1975-2000, but that is during the positive phase of the PDO. Now has that turned to the negative phase, with calmer El Niño’s and more La Niña’s and (ocean) temperatures which don’t go up anymore in average…
The premise that CO2 CAN BE accurately measured – and IS being accurately measured is assumed. THis I cannot agree with.
Next the measurements are subjected to all sorts of manipulations to achieve the crazy idea of a ‘mean average’ for the whole earth.
I’ve looked at the CO2 measurement data and found that it a wild dream to suggest that we can measure tiny changes in tiny amounts of a substance that is mixed (Note, air is a mixture NOT a compound) in layers and flows through wind currents and bubbles out of the earth here, there and everywhere (try breathing in a CO2 ‘puddle’ in a hollow in Yellow Stone National Park on a wind free day). Add to this that plants have an active daily and seasonal variation in the CO2 they digest. A good article that showed me the madness of it all is below – huge, unreasonable gestimates are made on the meager data.
JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH, VOL. 113, D20303, doi:10.1029/2007JD009693, 2008
steven guth September 23rd, 2009 at 8:31 pm
Steven,
CO2 is reasonably mixed in 95% of the atmosphere, away from the direct neighbourhood of strong sources and sinks. The yearly averages from near the North Pole (Barrow) via Mauna Loa to the South Pole are within a few ppmv, only modulated by the seasons (mainly in the NH) and the NH-SH delay (caused by the ITCZ, which hinders the exchange of air masses between the hemispheres).
In 5% of the atmosphere, one can see huge variability, that is over land in the lower few hundred meters in fields, forests, towns, volcanic vents, etc. But that is not important for the global trends where we are interested in.
See my take on the CO2 measurements at:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
I’ve looked at the CO2 measurement data and found that it a wild dream to suggest that we can measure tiny changes in tiny amounts of a substance that is mixed (Note, air is a mixture NOT a compound) in layers and flows through wind currents and bubbles out of the earth here, there and everywhere (try breathing in a CO2 ‘puddle’ in a hollow in Yellow Stone National Park on a wind free day). Add to this that plants have an active daily and seasonal variation in the CO2 they digest. A good article that showed me the madness of it all is below – huge, unreasonable gestimates are made on the meager data.
CO2 is being measured, repeatedly, and independently, at many sites around the globe. Unless there is a massive conspiracy and cover up, then there is a good chance their readings are correct. Just because you don’t understand how they can do it, doesn’t mean they can’t do it. If you want, they publish their findings and explaing them. You can read up on it to your heart’s content.
FE –
SJT, Al Gore is the strongest advocate and convinced a lot of people (including schoolboys) that something need to be done. I agree, he is not a scientist, but James Hansen, Stephen Schneider and several others were his scientific advisors and that make me questioning the motives of these people.
Indeed the known changes in forcing are in favor of CO2 as largest, but that doesn’t tell us anything about the effects. Most climate models use a similar effect for a similar change in forcing, but that is far from sure: solar has its main effect in the tropics, as well as in the stratosphere (ozone) as in the ocean surface and on cloud cover. CO2 effects are more spread over the globe and confined to the lower troposphere and the upper fraction of a mm of the oceans. In my opinion, that are quite different effects, which may cause different sensitivities for different types of forcing. See e.g. how the HadCM3 model probably underestimates the effect of solar with a factor 2 (within the constraints of the model!):
http://climate.envsci.rutgers.edu/pdf/StottEtAl.pdf
And don’t forget what the internal variability of the oceans/atmosphere system may cause. Current models were mainly developed in the warming period 1975-2000, but that is during the positive phase of the PDO. Now has that turned to the negative phase, with calmer El Niño’s and more La Niña’s and (ocean) temperatures which don’t go up anymore in average…
Gore is just much better at publicising AGW than the scientists. I find the IPCC reports to be much stronger. The claims in AIT were found to be mostly correct and supported by the accepted science. Gore was much more graphic in his representations of them, from what I have read. The sea level rises he represents will happen over a period of about a century. Kilimanjaro is disputable as an example of AGW, but is much more picturesque than other glaciers that are more solid as evidence.
AGW is going to have the most effect at the poles, IIRC, except that the Antarctic is surrounded by ocean and the polar vortex. The Arctic areas are changing faster than expected.
The uncertainties of the models are well documented, but what is of interest is not the change we are experiencing now, but the long term trend over the next century. We can only effect a change if we act now. By the time it is beyond dispute, there won’t be anything we can do.
SJT: you say; “CO2 is being measured, repeatedly, and independently, at many sites around the globe. Unless there is a massive conspiracy and cover up, then there is a good chance their readings are correct”. Yes indeed, that is so.
The problem is not with the validity of measurements of CO2 at those many sites, but that at each and EVERY one of those sites there is no Correlation whatsoever with changes in the Temperatures measured at ANY of those sites. ALL temperature changes as measured at ALL sites since 1958 correlate ONLY with increases in energy consumption at THOSE sites respectively.
SJT your statement that “The claims in AIT were found to be mostly correct and supported by the accepted science.” is a joke right. A court in England pointed out 9 things that were wrong, not substantiated, propaganda, etc. Others have noted up to 35 “falsehoods” if not outright lies.
To me the biggest “proof” that CO2 does not and cannot warm anything is that if it was possible some engineer, company etc would have a blanket, a waterbottle, a coat, a house wrapping made with 100% CO2 so to heat your home, person, soup etc. But since the second law of thermodynamics demands a down hill flow of energy none of this will happen. Just like CO2 cannot reheat the object (the earth) that heated it originally.
Fantastic write-up!
SJT September 23rd, 2009 at 10:59 pm
I have seen the film from the beginning, and noticed over 20 “errors” already the first time. A few months later the DVD was distributed for free with one of the largest magazines in our country. The costs were paid by the power supplier (60% nuclear here), probably in the hope to keep the nuclear plants longer open than politically foreseen (they should be closed from 2015 on under pressure from the green party here).
To show where he was wrong on that one point:
“The sea level rises he represents will happen over a period of about a century.”
He shows The Netherlands for over halve inundated with a rise of 6 m in one century? Come on. That is pure nonsense. The current increase is 3 mm per year, including the non-melt of Antarctica and the current summer temperatures of Greenland, which btw are below the summer temperatures there in the 1935-1950 period. Thus we may expect a (completely normal) increase of maximum halve a meter this century…
Again, we have plenty of time to see if the models are right. There is no looming catastrophe, no tipping points, no points of no return…
Excellent article Mr. Hammer.
I too worry that it may be too late. There are indeed too many constituent groups who have a vested interest in propogating this hoax. What really scares me is that the progressive movement never really changed from it’s earliest incarnations at the begining of the twentieth century. While many may be genuinly concerned for the environment, eugenics still lurks at it’s core. The same characters and their inhereitors that proposed eugenic policies to curb the, in their view, alarming population growth of non-Europeans, long ago seized the threat of climate change as a future justification of their goals.
And to those of you who are devout followers of the AGW orthodoxy: Why so viciously hostile and defensive? You’ve already fooled all those that matter.
Hi Jennifer,
Thanks for making my earlier email more readable. I too assumed that the CO2 readings were real science until I stumbled across stuff like the below quote. Then I tried to find how the figures were arrived at and what maths was used to make them apply to the whole world and I found it very difficult.
Conspircy? A strong word best left to the whole climate change debate. Let’s jsut say that the basic premises that CO2 can be usefully measured and averaged … and it doesn’t have a thousand sinks and inputs that we undersrtand and can measure is an assumption that I cannot accept – for reasons I set out before.
The article mentioned – I can email it to you shows (if you have just a little statistcal background) that the sampling is so small and the problems so huge that massive gestimates have to be made.
And strange to say that every year the gestimates … hold it, they no longer are taking CO2 increase measuremnets to prove the link to the warming theory but are just using input figures of anthromothpic CO2 production. So, maybe like the temperature figures the latest ‘better’ science doesn’t show steady CO2 increases…?
The link above in your web site box is to an article about climate that I wrote and placed on the web a few years ago. Below it the very first part of the article. (The article is in Word and loads slowly)
Please stay in touch ………steven
//////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
Climate Change, really – yes, always.
Prelude: my interest in Greenhouse, Steven Guth
In 1990 I was asked by the Geography teachers association to add to my collection of geographical texts by writing a book on the Green House Effect.
“Beauty,” I said to myself, “Easiest $10,000 I’m ever likely to make. Lots of material out there, all I’ve got to do is read it, condense it and present it in terms a 14 year old can understand.”
Alas, I was wrong. When I looked at the material and when I applied the statistical insights that I had been taught as part of my Social Science training I discovered that wildly speculative hypothesis were being presented as solid facts.
At the time the supposed ‘fact’ that got to me the most was (and it’s still not being adequately addressed in the literature) was the treatment of CO2. The CO2 cycle is open in hundreds of ways and no one has any accurate measurements of all that goes in or comes out.
/////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////////
From: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon_dioxide
In 1997, Indonesian peat fires may have released 13%–40% as much carbon as fossil fuel burning does [2] [3].
Quote from [3] is below,from: http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn6613
n 2002, Rieley and his colleagues estimated that during 1997 and 1998 smouldering peat beneath the Borneo forests released between 0.8 and 2.6 billion tonnes of carbon into the atmosphere. That is equivalent to 13 to 40 per cent of all emissions from burning fossil fuels, and contributed to the CO2 peak in 1998.
Quote [2] is below, from: http://www.ens-newswire.com/ens/nov2002/2002-11-08-06.asp
Indonesian Wildfires Accelerated Global Warming. By Cat Lazaroff WASHINGTON, DC,
November 8, 2002 (ENS) – Wildfires that scorched parts of Indonesia in 1997 spewed as much carbon into the atmosphere as the entire planet’s biosphere removes from it in a year, shows new research published this week. The fires, which destroyed thousands of forest acres and left peat bogs smoldering for months, released as much as 2.6 billion metric tons of carbon – mostly in the form of the greenhouse gas carbon dioxide (CO2) – into the atmosphere.
A team of scientists led by Susan Page from the University of Leicester in the United Kingdom attempted to estimate the mount of carbon released by the 1997 fires, and their potential effects on global warming. In an article published in the November 7 issue of the journal “Nature,” the researchers conclude that these fires were “a major contributor to the sharp increase in atmospheric CO2 concentrations detected in 1998.”
//////////////////////////////////////////////////
From 13% to 40% that’s a huge variation, it makes me wonder how well the physics and maths deals with the seasonal and locational variations in CO2 concentrations in the air. Air is a mixture not a compond so the task is like measuring tides levels on a thousand beaches over a year -. tricky. And what happens to the CO2 in the air? Does it well down – like the fog coming off dry ice – and collect in hollows? And in the upper atmosphere do the molecules come apart to become atoms of oxygen and carbon? And all those carbon sinks, waves, sea weed, coral, algae, trees, snails, microbes, insects … who really knows what is happening. And yet here we are talking about a substance that makes up 0. 038% of the volume of the earth’s atmospheric [Wikipedia on carbon dioxide] … and we are talking about possible 1% changes within that figure.
A literature search at the time showed me was ludicrous to focus on tiny percentages within percentages ringed by massive uncertainties when we knew that humankind was doing horrible things to the planet (and ourselves) with the new biochemicals that we were spreading on farmland, adding to food, depositing into water and unleashing into atmosphere.
…………..
SJT – except that Mauna Loa does show an effect – Timmy just ignored http://ormserver.arts.yorku.ca/publictalks/Direct%20Observation%20of%20Global%20Warming%20and%20Correlation%20with%20Atmospheric%20Carbon%20Dioxide%20Data.ppt
and kept ranting. Remember how these denialists work – just keep repeating the same olf bullshit over and over. Leave it for 6 months and bring it up again. Real science is beyond these dudes.
Ferdinand Engelbeen wrote:
Yes, as measured by satellite altimetry. Measured by tide guage (the pre-satellite method), it’s around 1.8mm per year – the same as it has been for the entire period we have records for. In fact, at the moment it’s a slowing a little, but well within “normal” variation. Many people will use the difference between 1.8mm/year and 3mm/year to suggest that sea level rise is accelerating, and say things like “our best estimate of sea level rise in 1900 vs our best estimate of sea level rise in 2000”. And indeed this is true – but is an apples to oranges comparison and is highly misleading. Yet advocates such as Luke and SJT, even when they know this, do not point it out – another example of the double standards applied by the “cause”.
Nor do any seem likely – except perhaps (an overdue) decent into an ice age! If the CO2 drives climate theory is correct, we may be preventing that particular disaster – who can say?
Luke wrote:
Yeah – we can’t have a nobody upsetting the “real”scientists, can we? Wouldn’t want an unknown patent clerk to publish anything – what would he know, eh? You just leave the science to real scientists, and don’t ask any annoying questions, OK?
Yeah – we can’t have a nobody upsetting the “real”scientists, can we? Wouldn’t want an unknown patent clerk to publish anything – what would he know, eh? You just leave the science to real scientists, and don’t ask any annoying questions, OK?
Read the climate book and tell me what is wrong in it.
http://geosci.uchicago.edu/~rtp1/ClimateBook/ClimateBook.html
I have already had one explicit refusal.
From 13% to 40% that’s a huge variation, it makes me wonder how well the physics and maths deals with the seasonal and locational variations in CO2 concentrations in the air. Air is a mixture not a compond so the task is like measuring tides levels on a thousand beaches over a year -. tricky. And what happens to the CO2 in the air? Does it well down – like the fog coming off dry ice – and collect in hollows? And in the upper atmosphere do the molecules come apart to become atoms of oxygen and carbon? And all those carbon sinks, waves, sea weed, coral, algae, trees, snails, microbes, insects … who really knows what is happening. And yet here we are talking about a substance that makes up 0. 038% of the volume of the earth’s atmospheric [Wikipedia on carbon dioxide] … and we are talking about possible 1% changes within that figure.
All you are saying is that because you can’t understand it, they can’t.
re Comment from: Luke September 24th, 2009 at 8:19 am claiming that I “just ignored http://ormserver.arts.yorku.ca/publictalks/Direct%20Observation%20of%20Global%20Warming%20and%20Correlation%20with%20Atmospheric%20Carbon%20Dioxide%20Data.ppt and kept ranting. Remember how these denialists work – just keep repeating the same olf bullshit over and over. Leave it for 6 months and bring it up again. Real science is beyond these dudes'”
Luke you disappoint me: I have dealt at some length with that ppt presentation by Turcotte et al. at my original Mauna Loa thread last week. It is to say the least disingenuous of you to cite it without mentioning some of its obvious faults. That is not the way academe used to work when I was young – any paper with known faults should not be recommended to the unwary, as you just did, without mentioning those faults, of which these are just a few;
1. It has not been published and was not peer-reviewed.
2. It claims to “Consider hourly temperature observations at [Mauna Loa] observatory for 1997-2006.” Those records do not exist on a daily, monthly and annual basis, if they did, they would be reported by NOAA’s site for that Observatory, which states explicitly that almost all monthly records since 1992 are incomplete, and that as a result, no annual totals are available since 1992. BTW, if that Observatory (sic) cannot maintain a daily record of temperarure, why should we believe its quite possibly equally fictitious [CO2] records?
3. Thus their Slides 3-5 are misleading with their claim they are based on a 30-year series of noon temperatures from 1977 (see my #2). Nevertheless they are fun, with their declining T trends (overlooked by Luke), despite the burgeoning [CO2].
4. Slide 7 is their best: it shows correctly that the average annual increase in [CO2] was of the order of 1.5 ppm p.a., but also that the Temperature Trend at ML is a stunning +0.22 oC p.a., or 2.2 oC per decade, which will result in an increase of 8.8 by 2050 (double the current average), and a total increase of 20 oC by 2100, by when Mauna Loa will be hotter than Dubai. Well done, Luke, I am sure you will bring this stunning Science to the attention of your Kev and Pen asap, proving as it does that we are way beyond tipping points.
Dear Luke, you are good at scouring the literature for articles that support your world view with its latent eugenicism, and hopeless at critical evaluation thereof. That is no doubt why you are a good public servant, that being one who knows what the Secretary or Minister or PM want to hear. Penny Wong’s Parkinson and Swan’s Henry are Australia’s own embodiments of Sir Humphrey with you able to offer backup as and when.
Tim Tim Tim
I’m watching ear to ear watching you squirm
(1) true but good enough for an invited AGU paper
(2) speculative tosh
(3) rampant opinion of yours
(4) your extrapolation – noone elses
but funny how other islands showing similar trends – latter slides. Isn’t micromet such fun – hahahahahahahahaha
Give it away mate.
Luke’s responses to my points: “(1) true but good enough for an invited AGU paper
(2) speculative tosh
(3) rampant opinion of yours
(4) your extrapolation – noone elses”
Mine:
1. So what? must have been met with some derision.
(2) Check NOAA’s site for ML temperature data
http://www.wrcc.dri.edu/cgi-bin/cliMAIN.pl?hi6198
(3) check 2 out of their 3 slides 3-5.
(4). I know that Australian and State public servants have difficulties with numbers, which is why their budget forecasts are always wrong. But I thought even you could see that a 0.22 oC p.a. trend increase in temperature implies 2.2 over 10 years, so 8.8 to 2050, and 11.0 from 2050 to 2100, for a total of 20 plus current not quite 8, so actual c 27.8 oC by 2100, hotter than Dubai or even Darwin.
Ever admitted to have been wrong?
I’ve printed out SJT’s article and will look at more depth.
But what gets me suspicious is that there is just not enough variation in the yearly figures. Is it true that huge flash fires are equal every year around the globe? Adding equal amounts of extra CO2 every year? And three or four points that are used as THE total world wide sample … that is like taking only 3 or 4 locations on the planet to make measurments of the age of people. And that 95% of the atmosphere statement. What is the 95% measured in – height above sea level, volume or mass of air? And if it is height where does the atmosphere end?
Remember we currently still lost in the world of mean averages and the statistics to create them. Variablity is more the issue in climate.
And how accurate are the measuement tools? After all 370 to 375 ppm is a tiny, tiny amount. Easy to see if I write it as 1,000,000 as the total and 5 as the shift.
Loved the graphs, good examples of how axis can be cut so as to make it appear that a the drop in the bucket is a huge amount. 5 in 1,000,000 that is 1 drop in 200,000 drops … more like a drop in a bathtub. … And, frankly, it is things like that that make me suspicious that things not mentioned about the recording protcol are also being pushed.
Read the below, it is from page two of the document that was suggested ….
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/co2_measurements.html
What I read this to mean is “That we select the data that shows what we want and drop the rest as ‘suspect’ and make an excuse for dropping it.” … as said the lack of data variablity worried me …
Of course, there is the question of throwing out of “suspect” values when averaging the hourly data. Some data are “suspect”, because they differ too much from the (expected) average of the previous (and following) data with more than a given (3 sigma) difference, or when mechanical/physical problems occur, or when there is wind from the wrong direction (land side in the case of coastal stations), etc. In many cases, the source of the deviation is known. All the data still are available in the hourly averages of 4 raw measurements, but are “flagged” and not used for daily, monthly and yearly averages. More on this in next items.
steven guth September 24th, 2009 at 9:38 pm
Steven,
If you are interested in “global” CO2 levels, then it is advisable to measure where there not too much local disturbances. The best point in that way is the South Pole, be it that that gives some mechanical problems, but the record there is near as long as at Mauna Loa (MLO), they started first, but there is a gap of a few years in the data.
All current stations (MLO since 1959) measure CO2 with 10 second intervals, the voltage readings are compared to the voltage readings of three (in early days two) reference gases, each measured every hour, and the result gives an average and sdv over the hour. These results are stored and eventually “flagged” if the data have a more than expected deviation (sdv within an hour, hour to hour variation, mechanical problems,…).
See: http://www.esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/ccgg/about/co2_measurements.html
What is the expected value at MLO? besides the small increase per year (about 2 ppmv), the largest change is the NH seasonal exchange of CO2 between the atmosphere and the oceans and vegetation (the latter gives the main change). The strongest seasonal change is in the months June and October, about 3 ppmv. That means about 0.1 ppmv/day, or 0.004 ppmv/hour. The latter far below the detection capability of the measurements.
Thus if there is a large varibility and uptick (+4 ppmv) measured, from experience they know that this is when volcanic vents and downslope wind mixes in. These data are not of any interest for global values (they may be of interest for volcanic people), therefore these are not used for daily/monthly/yearly averages. The same for upslope wind (mainly in the afternoon) which is slightly depleted (-4 ppmv).
But even if you use all MLO values (including the outliers), that gives the same result for yearly averages and slope as with the “cleaned” averages, within a few tenths of a ppmv.
Thus MLO and the other 9 baseline stations (and some 70+ other stations) all over the world show the same results with and without selecting, within a few ppmv, the largest difference being between the NH and SH, due to the slow exchange of air masses between the hemispheres, and the one sided emissions (90% in the NH).
The main variability in the monthly/yearly averaged CO2 readings is caused by the ocean surface temperature. Other effects like peat burning, if large enough, will be noticed, but in this particular case coincide with the CO2 peak caused by the huge 1997-1998 El Niño event, thus it is difficult to know individual contributions.
Anyway, the CO2 measurements are sharp enough to even find a slight cycle in the CO2 measurements coinciding with the moon cycle…
Some addition:
In the early days, the measurements were continuous loggers, and averages were manually calculated for 15 minute intervals, compared with the regular injection of reference gases.
Nowadays everything is computerised with 10-second samples and more reference gases (3 i.s.o. 2) and extra checks (a 4th reference gas outside the normal range, injected every 25th hour) are built in.
Raw hourly data for four baseline stations (Barrow, Mauna Loa, Samoa, South Pole, up to 2008) can be found at:
ftp://ftp.cmdl.noaa.gov/ccg/co2/in-situ/
I find the concept of ‘background air’ not satisfactory. It’s like measuring the average height of people for the planet in front of a japanese resturant in Toyko with a good 1/10 mm ruler. Lots is happening out there in the rest of the world to CO2. Back and forth, fires, earth venting, interactions, high and low and this is just left out of the straw man measurements to proport to show the mean ‘average’ situation for the whole planet.
The system of creating a level mean average curve for the air samples also does not impress me. If a party of Swedes comes into the Toyko resturant we just ignore them. They shouldn’t be in Tokyo – so they just don’t exsist.
As said, the variablity is the Climate Change issue and this has been manipulated out of the system.
To understand where I am coming from please look at my web site article. It loads slowly because it is in ‘word’
http://www.kheper.net/ecognosis/essays/Climate_Change.doc
To me the exciting thing is the ‘proto-water’ idea, anyone have any suggestions about it?
steven guth September 25th, 2009 at 7:12 am
Steven, you need to make a differentiation between measurements and fluxes of CO2.
Fluxes of CO2 are near large sources and sinks, which are mainly influencing the first few hundred meters over land. Fluxes from/to the oceans are far slower, see e.g.:
http://www.pmel.noaa.gov/pubs/outstand/feel2331/maps.shtml
where you can see that the flux passing the ocean surface varies between +1 and -3 mol/m2 per year. Reason why one finds about the same CO2 levels worldwide over the oceans and at any altitude over a few hundred meters, only modulated by the huge seasonal exchanges and the addition by humans. Thus in large parts (over 97%) of the atmosphere, one can measure the same level of CO2 within a few ppmv.
The individual fluxes are far less known, although currently over 400 CO2 measurement points (including tall towers and flights) are dedicated for that purpose.
Measuring CO2 for global averages is done as far away from fluxes as possible. That is where air is already mixed over large areas, preferentially in the middle of the oceans and in the middle of a CO2 desert: the South Pole.
Thus in your example: one is measuring the average length of the global population at a lot of airports in the transit hall (where you find a rather global mix of people), but any group of locals passing by is excempted, based on their “passport”.
I have read your document, is rather general, but I am quite skeptical about your ‘proto-water’…
But, but, the whole huge system of air mixing on the planet earth is in constant flux. ‘Backgrounds’ are special cases, straw men made to make measurements seem a part of the whole.
And the leveling out of variablity to get average means – a thing that seems to be done even in the ‘special’ quiet patches – is just a way of getting the required base averages that the whole current system of CO2 measurment relies upon. I don’t think that the system is doing a very good job of gettting the ‘earth’ average … We may agreee to disagree.
Flux IS the system – not a special case. And the number of fluxs is huge … and many of them, I would suggest, are still unknown.
Proto water, I am not skeptical about. It’s more than a flux, I would suggest, it seems to be a core variable.
But, but, the whole huge system of air mixing on the planet earth is in constant flux. ‘Backgrounds’ are special cases, straw men made to make measurements seem a part of the whole.
CO2 is stable, and the global circulation mixes it in to the whole atmosphere. Independent measurements at different sites around the globe all come up with roughly the same answer. At Mauna Loa in Hawii, or Cape Grim on the island of Tasmania in Australia. The fluxes are huge, but the amazing thing is how the global ecosystem has come to a rough balance between all those fluxes. Otherwise life would not be surviving as it does at the moment.
Please, if CO2 is stable in the global situation WHY is there a need to adjust the figures to get the stablity the “backgound’ model needs?
My I suggest that the 400 new flux measuring points on buildings and the other new locations – besides presenting a huge maths challange (which I am sure will keep many employed for a long time) is now indicating that the huge swings will make the ‘mean averages’ model hard to keep alive by using the maths ‘leveling’ arrangements currently being used in the CO2 ‘backgound’ model.
I have made this suggestion because I notice that the CO2 ‘background’ measurement model is now being dropped in favour of a new ‘model’ where CO2 is calculated from fuel and coal USE.
This of course assumes that the input from human coal and fuel burning somehow adds to the CO2 levels in a direct, smooth and simple relationship – which then go on to CAUSE progressive climate change. All the other known and unknow CO2 inputs and outputs are seemingly just ignored as not having an effect on the situation.
Two more points.
One,
I believe the CO2 issue is just a minor problem within the whole climate warming concept. But the CO2 issue bothers me because we are being made to accept a whole new monetary system on the basis of carbon credits. This is an issue with unknow consquences that I see as worrysome to say the least.
And two,
I’ve just finished the draft of a book on the Nazi time. And it scares me that the popular Nazi concept, “The Jews are destroying Germany, we need a policy to solve this problem.” Has horrifying parallels to the CO2 and climate change issue. How easy – I wonder – was it to get scientific research funds to add to the body of knowlege (already well established) that the Jews where the Cause of Germany’s woes. BTW not all Germans believed in the dangerous, inferior Jew theory but few in the establishment dared to speak out – and needless to say, they couldn’t get their opinions or research results published in the popular press or in a peer reviewed journal.
…. point two is a thought for the tea pot patriots!
Steven Guth;
Your point 2 is exactly what worries me the most and what I was alluding to in the latter part of my article. My parents were in Germany up till 1939 (victims of the holocaust) when they managed to get out. What is happening now is starting to feel very similar to the buildup they described to me of that time in Germany. As I said, totalitarianism does not need a premeditated dictator pulling the strings. An hysterical belief based agenda even when promulgated in all innocence is enough. The times will create a suitable dictator all primed and ready at the appropriate moment.
That is why assassinating a dictator rarely achieves anything, theres always another waiting in the wings more than ready to take over.
By the way, to forstall the likes of Luke et al, no I am not suggesting we are heading towards another holocaust (Nazi style) but I do fear we are heading towards an unprecedented and dictatorial intrusion into all aspects of our lives ourely in support of an ideology wich does not stand up to rational scrutiny. Once it starts, it will be almost impossible to stop until our society is irrretrievably damaged or destroyed.
If the science is so clear and certain why not have a free and open debate. That would prove the issue. Trouble is believers do not want their faith subject to impartial scrutiny because deep down they know it will not stand up.
steven guth September 25th, 2009 at 9:06 am
There is no “background model” for CO2. There are several circulation models, where fluxes are guestimated (based on d13C and O2 variations), but with large margins of error. See e.g.:
http://www.sciencemag.org/cgi/reprint/287/5462/2467.pdf
But the “background” CO2 is what simply is measured at 70+ sites all over the world, where 10 “baseline” stations are used for global averaging, because of the length of their record and rigorous calibration and maintenance procedures.
No one adjusts the figures of what is measured at any of the baseline stations, except for instrument errors and calibration gas errors. The data which are not used for averaging are these which are clearly contaminated by local sources and sinks or instrument failure. These are of no interest for global levels and trends.
But even so: do the math yourself: calculate the average and trend of all the data and compare that to the average and trend of only the “clean” (non-flagged) data. I have done that for 2004, there simply is no difference over a few tenths of a ppmv (while the 50+ years trend is over 60 ppmv).
In 97% of the atmosphere, CO2 levels are the same, except for seasonal modulation, despite the huge fluxes within and in/out 3% of the atmosphere. CO2 measurements above 500 m during flights over Colorado show the same levels of CO2 at the same day as at Mauna Loa, 6,000 km away, within a tenth of a ppmv. Thus one can say that there is a “background” CO2 level, wether one selects the data of interest or not.
I’ve just finished the draft of a book on the Nazi time. And it scares me that the popular Nazi concept, “The Jews are destroying Germany, we need a policy to solve this problem.” Has horrifying parallels to the CO2 and climate change issue. How easy – I wonder – was it to get scientific research funds to add to the body of knowlege (already well established) that the Jews where the Cause of Germany’s woes. BTW not all Germans believed in the dangerous, inferior Jew theory but few in the establishment dared to speak out – and needless to say, they couldn’t get their opinions or research results published in the popular press or in a peer reviewed journal.
You can’t be serious can you? It’s like saying hitler drove a black car, therefore all people who drive black cars are Nazis.
steven guth September 25th, 2009 at 3:23 pm
Part 2 (part 1 is now in the spam filter, but Jennifer will recover it soon I suppose):
You are confusing the CO2 measurements with the emissions. The latter are based on fossil fuel inventories (which are quite accurate, because of tax income…) and fuel efficiencies. The measured increase in the atmosphere is about 53% of what humans emit into the atmosphere. That excludes non-human net sources, as nature as a whole is a net sink for CO2, not a source.
If one plots the accumulated emissions against the accumulation in the atmosphere, that is a near fit at 53% of the emissions since about 1900. The first 60 years are based on ice core measurements, thereafter on MLO data. The near fit again is an indication that humans are at the base of the increase, as no known natural process is able to follow the emissions in such a straight way. See:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/dco2_em.jpg and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/acc_co2_1900_2004.jpg
All,
Sorry, but the Nazi comparison doesn’t good to the debate. I am offended too by the “denialist” smear used first by the warmers, but don’t use the same type of arguments to smear the other side. Please keep it on scientific arguments!
Ferdinand
Ferdinand;
I agree that smearing the other side is counter productive. In my comment however I thought I specifically pointed out that I was not trying to do that. I acknowledged that they were acting sincerely in what they think is the best of motives. However I believe the course of events is becoming dangerous and has some of the hallmarks which historically led to totalitarianism.
I feel that this is something that needs to be pointed out and brought to the attention of the general public. As a further example, 2 days after I sent the article to Jennifer for posting I read in Icecap of a company in England which has (not will, or is considering, but has – past tense) required its employees to submit private (ie: home) energy useage documentation on a quarterly basis. If the individual has used more than a quota set by the company, that employee is fined and his or her pay docked. The article did not say it specifically but I gather reading between the lines that it might be on a voluntary basis so far but there are plenty of examples where voluntary becomes compulsory with time. All that is necessary is that the first group endorse the scheme as worthwhile and if they really were volunteers they are already committed. Of course, if they were not volunteers then the coercian is already with us.
That company which is world wide is now planning to implement the scheme in other countries including America and is talking to the FTSE 100 companies about the scheme. This seems to me a significant escallation.
I have seen the situation here in Melbourne where now people are being urged to inform on those who do not adhere rigidly to the current water restrictions. Sure people should obey the restrictions but informing on your neighbour was one of the very significant developments of other totalitarian developments incuding I am sad to say the events in Germany in the 1930’s and 1940’s. It breeds a state of fear where no one trusts anyone else which is one of the hallmarks of totalitarianism. The scheme I refer to above has enormous potential to impose moral compulsion on those not in favour and such moral compulsion can be almost as severe as physical compulsion.
Sorry if I appear to be overly concerned with this but it does worry me and I feel it is an issue that needs to be raised.
It is no good waiting until the situation materialises – its too late then. If it is to be prevented itis necessary to see the signs early on. Alas, I think this is already beyond early on, we are entering the middle phase. The science is important and most of my effort goes into that but I think we also have a duty to raise these issues as well.
First,
Dear Michael, my parents too exited from Austria about the same time as yours. I’ve travelled about and read lots, mediated some and I concur with your concern and assessment. Have you come across Anna Bramwell the historian and the links she shows between the Nazis and the start of the Green Movement? Not popular but she is at Oxford, so it is hard to argue with her! I used her ‘Blood and Soil’ book in my story. I can email you, I’m…. guthltd@comcen.com.au
Dear Ferdinand,
To take sceince and/or religion out of politics is a good idea. But I don’t think we live in a perfect world where this has happened.
OK, I may be a too critcal. But, why is the so called perfect ‘background’ data adjusted before it is worked on? This query of mine is still unanswered .
In my misspent youth I did a bit of experimental Psychology and the only time I got the sort of smooth results like the years long constant 53% you mentioned was when I massaged the data inputs … “Oh that rat wasn’t healthy today, I shouldn’t have run it!” The rats were line breed for many generations, the variables were few and well known – I venture to say the weather is far more complex a system than rats in a maze looking for water.
Sorry, I did not make clear what I wanted to say. It was, “That the public perception of the CO2 accumalation data is being changed from direct measurement of the air that surrounds us to accepting the concept that the CO2 build up is directly, and only directly realted to the use of fuel and coal”.
Hence, like the new temperature measurments that cast doubt on the heating affect, I suspect that the newer CO2 levels (when adjusted to make allowances for the ‘flux effect’) will in fact show some results that may cast doubt on the ‘background’ CO2 model with its steadly rising CO2 levels.
Sea level data has also become more realistic thanks to new far better measurement systems.
I hope that my point is clearer now. I’m writing fast and stumbling over my thoughts.
steven guth September 25th, 2009 at 7:40 pm
Steven, my first message didn’t came through, but the essence is that the data are not adjusted, only the local contaminated data are not used for averaging. But even if you use all data (including the local outliers), you will find the same average and trend within a few ppmv, while the overall trend is 60 ppmv over the past 50+ years in 95% of the atmosphere.
In the same period, we emitted some 110 ppmv CO2. Which makes it clear that we are indeed at the origin of the increase. That is no matter of perception, but of simple mass balance…
The interesting point is that the whole CO2 cycle seems to react as a simpel, straightforward first order system in dynamic equilibrium and that the year-by-year variation in sink capacity (mainly by temperature variations) is quite modest (+/-1.5 ppmv) compared to the emissions (+4 ppmv) and the increase in the atmosphere (+2 ppmv).
There are some new NASA satellites going around which measured CO2 in the mid troposphere, and the Japanese which measure over land from the bottom up on the whole column. The first were adjusted with the… baseline station (and balloon and flight) CO2 data. The second preliminary results show a low bias, and are going to be adjusted the same way. The positive point is that we will see more of the worldwide fluxes over land, but the drawback is that the accuracy is not enormous, compared to direct atmospheric measurements.
Thus in total, the new measurements will not show anything different than we know today about the background CO2 levels (including seasonal changes), but may shed more light on where the main ground based fluxes are.
See: http://svs.gsfc.nasa.gov/vis/a000000/a003500/a003562/ for an animation of the AIRS results, compared to MLO and
http://wattsupwiththat.com/2009/09/13/some-results-from-gosat-co2-hot-spots-in-interesting-places/ for a discussion of the Japanese satellite results.
Ferdinand;
The practice of adjusting data acquired using a different measurement technique so as to make it match the older data worries me because if there is an error or inaccuracy in the older data the practice perpetuates it.
Having said that, spectroscopic measurement of CO2 would seem to me to be a fairly simple procedure and one that is easy to reference to absoute. Having read one of the references you cited it would seem the approch described is scientifically sound. Possibly the air around Mauna Loa is being contaminated by volcanic activity. If that were the case I would expect to see a large amount of noise in the data. especially at time scales of hours and days as the winds change. The published data that I have seen does not show this noise. If it is there and being removed by selective exclusion of some data then that is dishonest science. It is easy to establish a measurement precision. If the variation is significantly larger than that it is valid data and needs to be included – indeed highlighted since it indicates a possible problem with the measurement – such as contamination or poor mixing of the air. As part of my research at work I did try an experiment once to try and improve precision by obtaining a first pass mean using all the data, using distance from this mean to exclude the outfliers and then computing a new mean and standard deviation using the remaining data. It produced unacceptable shifts in the mean ie: it biased the result.
I do not have any data suggesting that measurements are being selectively excluded or modified, then again I don’t have any data to suggest they are not. Personally I tend to accept the Mauna Loa data. To me the biggest factor suggesting it is anthropogenic in origin is the time scale which is consistent with the buildup of human emissions.
What intrigues me is the older chemical analysis data. Much of that is excluded by AGW proponents on the basis that it is contaminated or was the reuslt of poor methodology. I find it suspicious that the portion of the data declared reliable just happens to be the values that support the AGW hypothesis and the people doing the selecting are those most interested in proving the hypothesis. Any reasonable review would find that an unacceptable situation.
I put very little weight on the ice core data other than to discount the emphasis the AGW proponents have put on it. There is too much we don’t know about causes of these events and the time constants are too different from what we are dealing with here. Lets not forget they talk about 800 yar lags but here we are talking about events spanning only 20 years. Its too easy to discuss qualitatively and lose that distinction. For example to suggest that the warming is driving CO2. Maybe it is but you can’t use the ice core records as evidence because they showed it took 800 years and here we are talking about months to a very few years at most. The thing I do put weight on is that the AGW proponents put lots of weight on the data when it seems to support their case and then discard it when it seems not to support the case. That behaviour is suggestive to me.
I must confess that to me the situation seems very simple. CO2 is a green house gas. Increasing its concentration in the atmosphere will cause some increase in retained heat – it must. The argument that it is a very small fraction of the atmopshere is not a valid one because the effect of that fraction is not small (2000+ absorbance at line centre). You might as well argue that an LD50 dose of Botullism could not possibly harm one because it is such a small fraction of our weight. The critical question is HOW MUCH additional heating will it cause. To get to the IPCC and other alarmist predictons one needs to posulate massive positive feedback in the climate system. For reasons I have already documented I disbelieve net positive feedback and certainly disbelieve net positive feedback of the degree that would be required.
I can only see three ways of approaching the problem. Firstly theoretical calculations which I have tried to do but find few can follow or are interested in. Secondly by looking for short term (10-100 year) correlations which I have also documented, some in the article of this thread. Thirdly by testing the proponents data for internal consistency which I have also tried to do again some documented in the article of this thread. On all three counts I find what to me are compelling reasons to be highly sceptical of the AGW proponent claims. I suspect they are grossly exaggerated so as to make the case compelling enough to force action (and its this that worries me so much). If they claimed a further 0.25 – 0.5C rise by 2070 above todays values I would probably agree but then there would be no crisis to address. I do not disagree with the concept of AGW only with the claimed magnitude of the effect.
As part of my understanding of how the universe is constructed I find it amazing that the air-CO2 balance can be so even. Does a major fire in southern australia (adding maybe 20% to global CO2) result in a 20% increase in phytoplankton in the sea? From what has been said these sort of mechanisms must be at play. But then why don’t the same organisms devour the human produced CO2? Bad taste?
………………………
I feel I should add my experience to the cut below …
……..As part of my research at work I did try an experiment once to try and improve precision by obtaining a first pass mean using all the data, using distance from this mean to exclude the outfliers and then computing a new mean and standard deviation using the remaining data. It produced unacceptable shifts in the mean ie: it biased the result.
The above is also my experince. Leaving out the results of the rats that were ‘sick’ baised the results to blases, but it did get me the results that were expected from previous research. Naturally I became cynical about rat driven experimental psychology (which is what the professor was trying to teach!) I can add that my rat experience changed for being a believer in ‘stimulus response’ psychology to becoming a Fruedian … it was more fun too!
I am just apply my experince to my assessment of the CO2 figures and how they are arrived at.
My family’s survial background, like Michael’s has made me suspicous of policies planted on us by Goverments. And as set out in my web artilce I can see much wrong with the whole AGW theory. At a minium it causes us to ignore many other issues that are contibuting to environmental degredation – issues that it are often easy and cost effective to do something about. I live on the ‘land’ (as australians say) and I see this around me every day.
To me the real climate change issue is the ever likely large volcanic explosion and the food less ‘dark ages’ winter this would produce. These occur pretty regularly and the word ‘overdue’ has been used.
Hi Steve;
Specific case in point. My father was walking down the street one day when he heard 2 people talking – criticising the Nazi regime. He saw there was a “police officer” within earshot so he went to them and said, “be careful what you say you are being overheard”. At which point all 3 were arrested. That is how he ended up in a concentration camp.
I must say you make a good point about the stability of CO2 concentration. The seasonal cycle is extremely marked which shows both that the measurement technique is sensitive and the atmosphere responds quickly to changes in input (by the way another indicator that the CO2 residence time is very short – relevant to jennifers thread “why I am a global warming sceptic part 3”). Have there been any significant erruptions in the last 20-30 years – I thought there had been. Did they show up in the record? If they did not then it cannot be just heavy filtering because that would have removed the seasonal variation. It would imply data modification which in my book pretty much invalidates the entire record. I need to go back and check whether there were any eruptions (Pinatubo springs to mind) and whether these showed up the in Mauna Lao data. (Tracking CO2 changes has not been a strong interest of mine).
Michael,
I think much of the problem with all climate material is the ‘average mean’ concept. which is why we were taught that ‘median averages’ are a good idea. Randomness does not do well with ‘means’ which why they are trancated and so to say “cleaned up”.
I think – and it’s my guess – that “they” are changing the public’s perception of the CO2 issue to human inputs rather than sticking to the accepted ‘background’ CO2 concept is a sign that some of the emperor’s clothes are missing. I wonder what? As you suggest – data modification?
And the “they”? Who are they? I wish I knew. In the long ago ages before TV their once was a Minister of Information who is accredited with saying. ‘Give me 5 years and I they will believe anything’ His name started with G.
I would like your personal email -I have stuff I would enjoy sharing with you. guthltd@comcen.com.au
Re CO2 and volcanoes, both St Helens and Pinatubo appear to have led to slight decreases in – but without reversing – the usual upward trend of [CO2]. Over a long period the dominant force on variations in the growth of [CO2] is whether it is a time of El Nino or La Nina, because of their impact on global uptakes of [CO2], with an almost perfect R2 correlation, but the current global recession has also had an impact (by reducing the volume of fossil fuel emissions).
I have just done the log linear growth rate for the growth of [CO2] at Mauna Loa 1959-2008, it’s less than 0.41% p.a. Yet ALL IPCC and other AGW texts eg Garnaut + Stern + Solomon + Meinshausens + Steffen and other Stasi et al claim this growth rate will be at least 1.0% pa throughout this century.
Please, Mr Hammer, as a professional spectroscopist, can you tell us anything about the absorbtion spectra of mixtures the atmpospheric gases that contain varying amounts of carbon dioxide, carbonic acid, and associated ions. I noted that while many treat the relationship linear, others consider it might be logarithmic. Is it not possible to settle the issue by experiment? Has that been done? Where are the experimental results?
Tim;
Your data is a surprise. My understanding is that volcanoes release copious amounts of CO2 as essentially a step function (ie: large amount in a very short time) Surely that should cause a transient global increase in atmospheric CO2 yet you say it led to a decrease (or at least a decrease in the rate of increase). Isn’t that the wrong way round.
If the volcano really did cause a transient decrease, what does that say about our understanding of CO2 mechanisms in the atmosphere. With regard to el ninos and la ninas which caused an increae in atmospheric CO2 and which a decrease?
Something does not seem to tie up correctly
Your data is a surprise. My understanding is that volcanoes release copious amounts of CO2 as essentially a step function (ie: large amount in a very short time) Surely that should cause a transient global increase in atmospheric CO2 yet you say it led to a decrease (or at least a decrease in the rate of increase). Isn’t that the wrong way round.
If the volcano really did cause a transient decrease, what does that say about our understanding of CO2 mechanisms in the atmosphere. With regard to el ninos and la ninas which caused an increae in atmospheric CO2 and which a decrease?
It releases particles into the atmosphere, which causes cooling in the short term. The lifetime of particles is a lot short than CO2. When Mt StHelens went up, there was apparently a lot of excitement in the modeling community because it meant they could test their models predictions against the measured response.
Wonders never cease; for once SJT has it right and we are in perfect agreement!
Mike, the El Ninos tend to raise [CO2] becuae the associated droughts across wide swathes of the land surface area reduce crop outputs and yields and reduce thereby the uptakes of [CO2], while La Ninas have the opposite effect.
All of this is beyond the comprehension of IPCC (AR4, WG1, p.624 Lead jerks Randall & Wood, supported by an army of lesser jerks including the usual Australian suspects like Andrew Pitman and some of the Stasi mob Meinshausen, Rahmstorf) which as ever thinks the mean from an aggregation of models backcasting and forecasting ENSO proves how good they are even though each one has it wrong by a wide margin (Fig.8.13b).
At no point does AR4 notice the precise correlation between rates of change in [CO2] and in ENSO – but then people like Pitman have no statistical competence.
But then that’s climate science.
BTW, I think the time has come to name and shame the “experts” of AR4 with their pathetic inability to undertake basic applied statistics.
All,
Again in defence of the CO2 measurements:
I have been in process (automation) engineering all my working life and agree, just averaging may give a bias, but letting spikes through into your control algorithm is a condition for disaster…
In the case of Mauna Loa, the origin of the spikes is known (downslope wind for volcanic degassing: about +4 ppmv, upslope wind with depleted levels by vegetation: about -4 ppmv). I don’t see a scientific problem with discarding these data for averaging, as these are not part of what we are interested in: the long time, if possible global, trend.
I have plotted both the full raw hourly average dataset and the “cleaned” dataset for MLO in 2004, there is hardly any difference in trend or average, only the first is noisier:
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_raw.jpg and
http://www.ferdinand-engelbeen.be/klimaat/klim_img/mlo2004_hr_selected.gif
Thus there is no data modification at all, only throwing out the outliers with known origin, which are influenced by local contamination.
About the older chemical data: most were rather accurate (+/- 10 ppmv), but many were taken on land near huge sources and sinks (towns, vegetation). Calendar used smart selection criteria (like: not intended for agricultural purposes) and found an average 300-320 ppmv over a long period, long before “global warming” was an item at all (he and others saw more CO2 as beneficial). The estimates of Calendar were confirmed 60 years later by the ice core measurements.
The Pinatubo eruption caused a CO2 injection of 42 to 234 Mt of CO2, according to Wolfe:
http://pubs.usgs.gov/pinatubo/wolfe/
Hard to measure, as that spreads immediately and local measurements were impossible at the time of eruption. But even the largest estimate of 234 Mt CO2, or about 60 MtC is the equivalent of 0.03 ppmv CO2 in the global atmosphere. That is below the detection limit of the CO2 measurements… Compare that to the 8 GtC (4 ppmv) humans emit per year. In fact, the opposite happened: the cooling increased oceans absorption and the diffusion of light increased photosynthesis leading to a lowering of the increase rate:
http://www.gsfc.nasa.gov/topstory/20011210co2absorb.html
I have not looked at the IPCC for the temperature-CO2 rate of change relationship (indeed the trend used by the models is overblown), but Pieter Tans of NOAA has a nice overview of that relationship here:
http://esrl.noaa.gov/gmd/co2conference/pdfs/tans.pdf
Thus while there is a extremely good correlation between CO2 accumulation and accumulated emissions, the year-by-year variability in growth rate is modulated mainly by temperature variations.
Ferdinand; I have the greatest respect for all your contributions, But none at all for Pieter Tans, with his failure to consider temperature changes at Mauna Loa itself vis a vis [CO2] measurements there conducted by himself. The man is regrettably a charlatan and rogue, at least until he explains why he (a) fails to ensure proper daily temperature measurements at his very own Observatory, and then (b) cites “global” temperatures doctored by James Hansen of GISS to ensure some vestigial correlation between [CO2] at ML and global temperature.
When I visitited my local doctor with obvious high fever 2 days ago, I would not have been impressed if she had said well “I have Pieter Tans’ temperature at ML today and he has no fever so clearly you don’t.”
Yet that is the level of the “science” of the IPCC.
Not one of its 2500 Nobel prize winners has had the elemental scientific curiosity to ask that given the [CO2] at ML has risen by 71 ppm since 1958, what has been the correlation between that increase year-by-year and that of temperature at Mauna Loa? Tans has no answer, because since 1992 he simply could not be bothered to record on a daily basis the temperatures at ML.
In that regard he is no worse than ALL 2500 authors and editors of AR4, not one of whom has ever bothered to evaluate temperature change at ANY LOCATION ON EARTH vis a vis Tans’ [CO2] measurements.
I have previously reported the NIL correlation between Tans’ CO2 and temperatures at ML to 1992 (when he stopped ensuring daily temperature records). Is it that hard, beyond all the financial resources of the Clinton-Bush-Obama administrations, that not even the teaboy/girl (clearly beneath the dignity of Dr Tans) can be paid to record daily temperatures?
But it is worse than that. Without being paid by Exxon, more’s the pity, I can reveal that there is ZERO correlation between changes in [CO2] and temperatures anywhere in California. This is an ongoing project of mine, so the results are preliminary, but so far I have Negative R2 (-0.008) and coefficient for changes in [CO2] and temperature at both Los Angeles Airport and Tustine Ervine Ranch (rural CA), and little better at LA Civic Centre.
Evidently with all its resources the IPCC has not been able to find a single climate scientist capable (willing) of doing a regression of temperature changes anywhere on the planet against the ubiquitously identical changes in [CO2].
I conclude that without exception all those who allowed their names to be appended to the IPCC’s AR4 are guilty of High Treason as defined by Paul Krugman in the NYT last July.
Further evidence of the charlatanry of ALL involved in the IPCC’s AR4 and its cheerleaders both here and in Pittsburgh:
The R2 for temperature changes in LA Civic Centre rises from 0.006 to 0.2 when we add LA electricity consumption to [CO2], with the T-stat and coefficient both negative for CO2.
But then it is not fair to expect our Kev and Pen, let alone Gordon Brown and Barack Osama bin Laden, to understand regressions and their coefficients. However we can rely on the systemic dishonesty of their advisers, like Parkinson and Garnaut (DCC here) and Holdren (Washington), to supress such politically inconvenient information.
Tim Curtin September 26th, 2009 at 9:58 pm
Tim, calm down! No need to use such strong words. I have a high respect for Pieter Tans (of Dutch origin, I am Flemish), as he follwos the highest standards of science in maintaining a rigorous control on all CO2 measurements under his supervision spread over the world. That has nothing to do with what others at the IPCC and climate modellers do with the data. I can only hope that one day the temperature stations all over the world will be subject to the same standards.
The CO2 data measured at Mauna Loa are more or less global CO2 levels. These are in no way influenced by local temperatures, which are measured btw with wind speed/direction and precipitation in the meteorological station adjacent to the MLO CO2 station, Pieter Tans has nothing to do with that. But these are influenced mainly – with some delay – by vegetation changes and ocean temperature changes over the seasons over the whole NH atmosphere. Thus IF there is a correlation, then one must compare the NH temperatures as a whole with the CO2 levels at MLO. Not the local temperature.
Of course, the “global” temperature by Hansen’s GISS can be discuted, but the absolute temperature is of no interest here, it is the variability of the temperature that is directly correlated with the variability of the CO2 increase around the trend (which itself is a direct result of the emissions). This correlation is also found by several skeptics, here MacRae at Icecap:
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
And here on this own site:
http://jennifermarohasy.com/blog/2009/03/the-available-evidence-does-not-support-fossil-fuels-as-the-source-of-elevated-concentrations-of-atmospheric-carbon-dioxide-part-1/?cp=all
With my reaction on March 26th, 2009 at 12:39 am
The error made by several skeptics is to translate the correlation of temperature variability and CO2 increase variability to the cause of the trend itself, but one can’t deduce the cause of a trend by looking at the (often detrended!) derivative of the trend…
So there is a near fit correlation between the accumulated emissions and the accumulation in the atmosphere and there is a good correlation between the derivative of the accumulation (the yearly increase) and the yearly variation in (global/NH/ocean temperature). Thus there is a high probability that the emissions are the cause of the increase and that temperature variations are the cause of the year by year variability of the increase. In both cases there is a plausible mechanism at work.
I am a skeptic by nature, but I try to look at the evidence of both sides of the fence. Not everything written by “warmers” is wrong and not everything said by skeptics is right. It is just a matter of the right scientific arguments…
About the influence of the excess CO2 on temperature: here I agree to a large extent with Michael that the IPCC/models/warmers by far exaggerate the “projections” of the future warming and that we may end (far) below the minimum that the models expect for 2xCO2.
From what I understand the stablity of the CO2 figures just shouldn’t be there.
I was walking this morning – there is snow in the hills behind us – it sure isn’t warming around here! I did some reflective thinking.
What, I wondered is pushing the stablity in the system? We have only looked at the biological CO2 cycle. And there must be something else or surely there would be lags. The clue I got was from the suggestion that near volcanos the CO2 disappears really quickly.
So maybe there are some other processes going on?
How about exchanges with sub atomic particles of the hydrogen that escapes from the earth?
Or some interaction with the sun’s energy? Or some other energy on the planet that we havn’t given much thought?
So has anyone expanded the CO2 cycle concept into physics and/or sub atomic particle chemistry?
Ferdinand – I do have respect for Pieter Tans re his measuring of [CO2], although I am always doubtful about seasonally adjusted data, thankfully he does show the unadjusted. But he cannot be unaware that his measurements have attained enormous political significance – leading to the extraordinary upcoming circus in Copenhagen with its likely baleful consequences on living standards of all of us – because of the claimed 95% certainty that changing [CO2] causes climate change in terms of both precipitation and temperature. Surely it is not beyond his personal influence – or his intellectual curiosity – to ensure that those operating the met. station next door to his own lab. maintain a daily temperature record – they and he are colleagues after all, I assume all employed by NOAA. Or is it too difficult to take the daily readings from their electronic system? (I have friends here in Canberra who manage, and have noticed how their records now diverge from that at Canberra Airport (dutifully reported by our BoM to NOAA) since the huge expansion in carparks and buildings there over the last 5 -7years or so). Regrettably climate scientists show no interest in quality controls on their basic data.
I fully accept that of course Tans’ CO2 data are not (much?) affected by local temperature variation – but the converse is what is claimed by the IPCC, and as I have said, if ML is pristine for CO2 then it should also qualify as an ideal temperature measuring station for the purest possible measurement of the Radiative Forcing effect on temperature (in Watts/sq. metre) from increases in [CO2]. For the NH data ML should be included, but is not – one can only assume it is deliberately excluded by NASA-GISS.
Thus with respect I cannot agree when you say “IF there is a correlation, then one must compare the NH temperatures as a whole with the CO2 levels at MLO. Not the local temperature.” The problem with the “NH temperatures” is that they are literally a concoction by James Hansen of GISS and Phil Jones of HadleyCRUT, artfully doctored to show what they want to see, as Steve McIntyre and Anthony Watts have documented in great detail. I myself have noted here and in 2 seminars I gave at ANU last year (see my website) that the “global” data excluded most of the tropics until 1960 or so, with less than 80% coverage of the globe before then, creating global “coolth” before 1960.
In any case while you say “there is a good correlation between the derivative of the accumulation (the yearly increase) and the yearly variation in (global/NH/ocean temperature)”, I cannot see it, as R2 less than 0.5 indicates in general a false hypothesis (or one incorrectly specified). As my post just prior to yours notes, the R2 for a correlation between changes in [CO2] and changes in electricity consumption by location shows a marginally better fit than that for CO2 alone, albeit with a NEGATIVE coefficient on changes in [CO2] for LA Civic! If I can get data on transport fuel consumption in LA I suspect similar outcomes, better R2, and probably still negative for CO2!!
Anyhow this is work in progress, and I will keep you posted, but just to repeat, a univariate correlation is unlikely to be applicable to the relationship between NH climate and changes in [CO2].
BTW, I even have a formal qualification in Afrikaans, it used to be my second language, but did not take me far in Brussels on my annual visits there from 1976 to 1987!
Tim – are you still spreading utter utter bullshit after having been slapped down by Turcotte et al. Did you see the other measuring stations doing the thing. hahahahahahahahaha
Why debate when you can bullshit?
Luke – it seems you are “still spreading utter utter bullshit..” after I slapped down Turcotte et al. for claiming that Mauna Loa Observatory will be the hottest spot on earth by 2100 with its ANNUAL temp. rise of 0.22 oC according to Turcotte et al.
As for your “other measuring stations”, none of them show ANY impact of rising [CO2] on temperature.
Luke, please name any single station anywhere on this planet where rising [CO2] correlates with rising temperature. I just did 3 in Arnold’s California where the correlation is NEGATIVE. Geddit?
Luke’s only contribution to knowledge (do please forward to Wiki) is “hahahahahahahahaha”.
I don’t know if anyone is listening to me.
But I do think I’m onto something with my suggestion that other variables beyond biololgical activity are involved in the CO2 cycle.
Been in a limestone cave? The water that desolved the limestone was slightly acid – carbonic acid. Soda water? Full of CO2. Now, water is very reactive, and strange stuff. Forget ice, lets consider water, charged water molecules (as in thunderstorms when nitrogen is absorbed as well), water vapour (humididty) and I think there is a charged vapour state as well.
Lots of water vapour in volcanoes, charged I bet. And those El Ninos, I have thought about them and ocean currents as well – see the last part of my climate change article.
I suspect that much of the antartic weather that effects us – like the snow on the hills behhind canberra today – is driven by the huge karabatic winds that sweep out of antartica (and are ignored becuse our models are northern hemisphere based) Surely the water particles assocaited with these winds are charged.
And I bet charged water – in whatever form – absorbs CO2 like crazy.
Pressure does it too – soda water for sure…
any takers??
////////////////////////////////////////////
Link to article on climate
http://www.kheper.net/ecognosis/essays/Climate_Change.doc
To continue with new ideas.
1. Let’s assume that earth’s biological life is so hungry for CO2 that the minium of CO2 in the air (mixture) is quickly reached.
2. This means that the inputs and outs of CO2 in the system are not important accept in given locations and in the short term.
3. Let’s accept that the ‘background’ CO2 level has been rising.
3. So may I suggest that the CO2 CARRYING CAPACITY of air is the critcal factor.
4. So what has been gradually reducing the CO2 carrying capacity of air?
?????? My guess is that it is electronic somg???
Has anyone checked CO2 levels near power lines, transformer farms, TV, Radio or radar masts? Or near nuclear facilites?????
opps, point 4 from my last post should read ……….
4. So what has been gradually increasing the CO2 retention capacity in the air?
… electonic smog
OK, no takers so far to my ‘why more CO2 suggestion.
So let me repeat my propostion in more (and I hope better) words
There are huge yearly CO2 input swings (like random fires) and the known seasonal swings in CO2. Why does this NOT SHOW up as variations in the “background” CO2 figures. The simple reason is that the figures have been ‘adusted’ so these are taken out – which, in my mind, throws the total validity of the measurement system to the winds.
But people on this blog have assured me that the adjustments are not that great and are not destroying the validity of the data. I can accept that.
So why no variations in background CO2??
That’s where my new hypothosis comes in.
1. I consider that currently biological life on this planet is so hungry for CO2 it grabs whatever it can get hold of really, really quickly.
2. So for the base line “background” CO2 figure to make sense. It must indicate the last tiny amount CO2 that is locked into the air and is too hard for biological life to access … to ‘recover’ from the air.
3. Again I assume the figures for “background” CO2 are accurate.
4. So why has the ‘background’ CO2 level been on the slow rise?
5. Because the retention ability of the air to hold CO2 has increased…. WHY, why?
6. Of course I don’t know. But there are many suggestions for checking and testing – from … elctricity generation and power line transmission (it increase the ionic state of the air – so letting it drag in and hold more CO2) …. to … the action of new types of air borne bacteria … to … cosmic stuff linked to the activites of distant galaxies.
7. my earlier suggestion is the world wide increase in electronic smog – radio, TV, phone and radar impulses excting the air and so allowing the retention of more CO2
8. this hypothesis of CO2 retention is testable. (Mention my name when you apply for research funding … it won’t help, but it will make me feel good!)
9. Alas this idea would destroy the game of ‘inputs out outputs’ and the even stranger game that what we humans burn makes a huge and real difference … And the even deadlier game of ‘carbon credits’. So my – or should I say “the” – retention CO2 model is not going to be quickly accepted.
10. BUT I do think the CO2 retention idea fits the observed facts better than the current input and output model with it’s many unworkable unknows. The inputs and outputs game correlates just one activity – and one human activity at that – the burning of stuff. So many other inputs human and otherwise also correlate to CO2 ‘background’ obseravtions – but correlation IS NOT causation.
11. NOT that increases in CO2 matter, but’s that is another story for another time…
7. the one I suggested
I sent my blog details (as above) to some friends to see if they had any comments.
David sent back an email which included the paragraph below.
David is an inventor, an expert at micro currents in medical and other electronic equipment. I don’t know how good is his idea. But propostion is valid and yes, it should yield a testable experiment.
Of course his answer does move towards giving me an answer to the of “how can the CO2 move so quickly through the biosphere?”
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If plants need CO2, they’ll get it; as a radio-type transmission more than by favorable winds that include CO2. CO2 (and everything else) is more than just “matter”. CO2 has other ways to exist as well as being observed as a gas. It is a set of resonant electro-magnetic facts. Has anybody calculated the weight of CO2, for example, needed to form just the bamboo that grows, every day, in a rain forrest? Where, at 0.03% (?) of the air, can such a large quantity of CO2 come from. Forrest winds don’t blow like hurricanes only in the evenings, continuously, to supply just one gas that is needed for plants to have substance. The weight of the still air, in a forest, does not support the amount of CO2 needed for the increase in plant life over the same time. Taking a minuscule percentage of gas, out of air, and replacing it with Oxygen, does not involve enough steam-physics and Newtonian inertia, of the air, to make the events have any credibility but, by some set of miracles yet to be explained properly, plants grow and carbon becomes part of many minerals.
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… And by way of explination David added this paragraph …
A crystal set radio uses no batteries nor external power, instead gets its power, that it turns into audible sound, out of the sky, from the radio transmitter. The aerial of a crystal-set, to produce pleasant very quiet music in a small room (more power than needed for headphones) may be cross-section about 2mm; 30mm long. Take the cubic capacity of the wire, and divide that into the cubic capacity of the cubic area of the radio station’s influence, multiply that by the actual sound energy available for the room, and the wire has gathered how many times more power than its cubic capacity alone should collect? The aerial system is tuned to resonate with the radio station, similarly to the way a string on a piano is tuned to match other strings on the piano. Any energy, put into one member of a resonant group, gets distributed and shared by other members of the group. The stress in space, caused by the radio station, is relieved by resonant systems that soak up the transmitted energy, taking the stress away from nearby areas and rendering the stress into relatively harmless heat energy. Without resonance, radio-TV transmitting stations would have to output trillions (whatever) of Watts of power to equal what a few kiloWatts can do.
Because an increase of CO2, (and warmth too more often than not), causes faster plant growth – that means that plants are also absorbing solar energy at a faster rate. If increased CO2 causes plants to remove more solar energy from the radiation balance equation, (if it’s converted into a chemical energy potential then it ain’t heat no more), it is then CO2 acting as a NEGATIVE feedback. I would surmise that this effect is likely not a large one but certainly yet another that you will not find in any IPCC cited or James Hansen computer model. Little things add up…
There are four factors which need to be considered with regard to the cause of global warming, and not one as claimed by establishment science.
The first is carbon emissions from Human activity. The second is carbon emissions from non-Human sources. The third is the increase in the emission of the Sun over time. And the fourth is the movement of the solar system within the Milky Way galaxy.
The increase in the density of the emission within the solar system, and its absorption by the Earth, increases the density of the emission (gravitational) field of the Earth.
The atmosphere of the Earth is retained by the Earth through the atmosphere’s interaction with the emission field of the Earth.
It’s the increase in the density of the emission field of the Earth which underpins the increase in the density of atmosphere of the Earth, which in turn underpins the green house effect and global warming.
If Human carbon emissions were reduced to zero, there would still be global warming because it’s a normal part of the evolution of the planet.
The increase in the emission of the Sun occurs over an extended period of time.
The movement of the solar system within the Milky Way galaxy sees it being subject to attraction which entails a variation of its impact upon the density of the emission within the solar system and thus a variation in its impact upon density of the Earth’s emission field and its average temperature.
As the solar system moves into and out of a source of emission within the Milky Way galaxy, the average temperature experience by the Earth would go through periods of increase and decrease within an overall increase.
This could explain the ice ages experiment by the Earth. Cold periods would be the norm, followed by periods of increased temperature within an overall increase in temperature. This is supported by the fact that the ice ages were increasingly less severe.
Then there are carbon emissions from non-Human sources.
Given the above, it’s untenable to claim that Human carbon emissions are the sole cause of global warming.
If we say that non-Human sources alone are not the cause of the present rate of increase in the average temperature, and given that the increase in the emission of the Sun occurs over an extended period of time, this leaves Human activity and the movement of the solar system within the Milky Way galaxy as two possibilities as the cause of the present rate of the increase in the average temperature of the Earth.
Until the science establishment can quantify the relative influence of these two factors, they can’t claim that the present rate of the increase in the average temperature of the Earth is caused by Human activity.
To answer the inevitable response: not far-fetched, but fundamentally fetched.
The fact that the science establishment has not even realized that the Milky Way galaxy can have an impact upon the Earth, is indicative of their lack of a truly fundamental perspective or paradigm.
The fact that the emission of the Sun increases over time, and that gravity is caused by the absorption of emission, are realizations that are derived from the fundamental paradigm that integrates science.
This is presented in the essay, “The Logic of the Universe (Debunking Physics and Discovering the Theory of Everything as the Paradigm of Science)”, located at: http://members.westnet.com.au/paradigm/forever.pdf
Yours,
Stephen Mooney
Stephen.Mooney@westnet.com.au